Coup de What?
by coincidencless
Summary: The Blacks were corrupted in mind, hardly at all in body. The Twilight Flight had their bodies corrupted, not their minds. They fight for Deathwing because they are brainwashed. What will one Twilight drake do when her mind is freed from the brainwashing?
1. Chapter 1:Egg

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or sequels of it. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>Many mortals and immortals alike define their early memories as 'hazy' and 'not quite there'. Such was not the case with my earliest memories. For me, there was the certain point where I remembered, separated cleanly from the instant before as unable to be remembered at all. This is not as good as one might think; you remember all the unpleasant details in life perfectly, and any forgotten good moments are <em>gone<em>, not even the memory that something good was there. And my extremely early life was not exactly the best. But it was for the best, I know now. It all worked out in the end. But enough about my memories, you're here for my story, yes? Good, let's start at the beginning then.

* * *

><p>I couldn't see anything. Not a single thing. I was small too. I had just developed my conscience. I was curled up tightly, I was in some sort of fluid, all around me. I felt like I was floating in an endless sea of darkness. Somehow I could breath. I never got hungry, or thirsty either. Days passed like this, and I grew. My wings developed. I wanted to stretch them, but I couldn't, I had some sort of paralysis around me. My thin eyelids became thicker, not like there was any light to block out. I slowly and slowly grew until I could feel myself bumping against something hard. I wanted to break out, to see if anything laid beyond this. I pecked at it lightly; I could move somewhat, the paralysis was weakening, but as soon as I did I heard a voice. A deep, motherly voice that I now know belonged to my brood-mother, Calestrasza.<p>

"Not yet, not yet. A few more weeks, just wait." I listened, and went back to resting. Those were the good days, growing, resting, never feeling hunger, or thirst, or fear, or pain. And they were drawing to an end, very fast.

One day I woke up from a resting period, reflecting on what little information I knew about the world for the umpteenth time, when there was a great commotion. It sounded like there was something rushing through the air my brood-mother sometimes spoke about outside, sounds like _hssssss_, _diiing, haaaup_. I didn't know what was going on. I heard a voice, the deep, motherly voice that sometimes called out to wait, but not always to me. Why was that? I didn't know, my instincts had not yet developed. But all the other times the voice was calm, relaxed. Now, it was panicked, filled with a strange urgency, like it felt it didn't have much time to speak.

"No, no! Not mine, please!" Another woosh of something through the 'air'. I wondered what the air felt like, but now I felt a sickening feeling in my crop. What was going on? A flash of light exploded, and I saw for the first time what colors were. My tough-coating shell was red. Tough, with black dots that seemed to extend beyond, and red. I saw a glimpse of the world around me. Colors beyond my imaging. Green... grass, purple and blue... flowers. A giant red behemoth that filled me with a sense of calm. It would've been the most beautiful thing I had ever seen- not like that's much coming from somebody who, until then, had only pitch black darkness- if it weren't being destroyed. Red and orange spread along it dangerously. The light faded, and I had my blackness again. And the blackness was good. Nothing dangerous here. Not in my shell. Or so I thought.

My world tilted to the side dangerously. I felt my liquid slosh around me, and the currents bumped me into my shell _painfully_. The first pain I have ever felt. I wanted to shriek out, cry for help, but I couldn't in this fluid. Maybe I could scream in air? The other voice always could, and she, I think it's a she, was in the air. But I couldn't move to peck my way out. The paralysis had returned! A greater clenching in my crop, I wanted to double over, which is hard when already curled up as tightly as possible, and regurgitate... what? I had nothing to regurgitate, and no room for it to go back out into. I just needed to... hope. Yes. My shell kept swinging sickeningly, it wasn't stable. Was the world rocking? Or was it me who was moving? I needed to hope I would be... safe. More words started to come into my mind. Fear, panic, love, life, death, mate, defend, attack, my instincts were slowly trickling in. And they told me I wasn't supposed yet to... hatch. After what felt like an eternity, but which was likely only days, the world stopped moving. I felt warmth around me, like a fresh... fire, the kind red dragons like myself produce, burning around me. But I knew there was no fire, right? I heard voices outside, male voices, and these weren't comforting, they weren't peaceful. Filled with malice and spite, everything I was now against.

"Well, see we got a new batch of eggs?" This voice was dark and gravely, as if it had crawled out of whatever was below me right now. A smooth, silky, accented voice answered.

"Yup. Got most all of them. That red dragon got away though" My brood-mother? She got away? Got away from what? The silky voice continued.

"Just moved the last batch to the twilight infirmary- aw shit here they come. Act... natural. Remember, they can smell fear." Then I felt a wave of fear roll through me. Something was here with me, and it was _not_ normal. Not natural. Evil. Everything about these new whatever-they-ares was just, just wrong. I felt one of the wrong-things come closer to me. A _cold_ chill ran down my spine, up and down my curled-up wings. These wrong-things were making splashing, gurgling, snorting sounds. I felt the one next to my, what had the first voice called it? Egg? The wrong-thing near my egg got even closer. I wanted to scream at it, _No! Get away! Leave me alone! _But I couldn't make a noise. Then I felt it.

I felt my world spin away from me. I was back in the earliest of my days, floating in a seemingly endless ocean of liquid darkness all around me. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew that it was wrong, it was evil, it was malicious, and it was putting me in danger. Then it ended. I felt like I'd been battered. Pain was everywhere, seeping through my liquid. The wrong-things went away, and I must have slipped into unconsciousness, but I didn't have any way of telling, my 'egg' was still completely dark inside. For what seemed like forever the wrong-things would come back time to time and cause me pain, but something didn't add up. Each time they did, the pain decreased. My instincts had kicked in to full bloom, everything a red whelp needed to know to carry out our charge of protecting life. But the pain was ruining my mind. One day the two voices came back. By this time my egg was foul by the pain the wrong-things inflicted on me. Small lumps of solidified liquid floated around me. My egg was clear, and it... wasn't red anymore.

My egg was a dark violet, and it had no more black-circles-extending-out. Just a smooth, clear tough shell around my lumpy liquid. I had no darkness anymore. What I saw terrified me. Other eggs like mine. Dozens, scattered around me. In the distance, somewhere far below was a vast red light. This was wrong. I wasn't safe here. I should be safe, I hadn't even hatched yet! Where was the rest of the red flight? They were supposed to protect life! Hello, LOTS of life here needing protecting! The foulness of my liquid seemed to whisper to me, _Yes, yes!_ I suddenly felt myself moving. I was swaying, the way I had so very, very long ago. My egg was placed in a dark room. Darkness was good. Darkness was the best- no, why was I thinking that? I am a member of the red flight! We burn the darkness _away!_

But I found that the accumulated pain from the wrong-things had made me weak. I know I passed out now, because there was a dim light for me to contrast against.

The following days, weeks, I don't know how long passed in agonizing slowness. Agony, something one should _never_ experience before even hatching. Yet that's what happened to me. The foulness of my liquid seemed to pump hateful thoughts into my brain. I wanted to be out in the air more than ever now! Just to be free of the liquid. But who could free me? It was the job of my brood-mother to protect me! Where is she? She abandoned me! Why? Why would she ever do that? NO! There's the hatred again. She did NOT abandon me! I was taken! She's probably looking for me right now! _But she isn't. You've been here so long, she would have found you if she were looking_. No, no shut up! I'm too young for this! I haven't hatched yet! LEAVE ME ALONE! What's happening to me? I would never have thought these things before! Why now? _Because your brood mother abandoned you_. NO! I wanted life to be simple again, just rest, no pain, no foul liquid, no wrong-things, no light, just an endless sea of dark liquid I was suspended in for all of my existence, that's all I want!

_You can never have that again. Not with the reds_. What, what do you mean, voice in my head?

_Join US!_ NO! I shake the thought from my head as much as I can while unable to move. I've grown so much. I take up nearly my entire egg. My instincts are telling me that I need to hatch soon, and that this voice is evil.

_If your instincts were right your brood-mother would not have left you to this life of pain_. She didn't leave me. I was taken from her. And, and I have no clue as to how big the outside world is! She could be looking for me right now for all I know!

_Ah, little whelpling, how wrong you are. Do you truly think she would care about you? A tiny, insignificant whelp not even of her own flight? The reds do not care about other flights._ Other flights? Wha-What do you mean?

_Have you not noticed it? Your egg is no longer red. If you could look at your scales you would know that you are NOT red. You are not a member of the red flight anymore._ No... no lies! Lies! But, it wasn't a lie. Red eggs weren't like, like this, this was all wrong. I really wasn't part of the red flight anymore. No... no. How could this have been? If I'm not part of the red flight, then who am I? What am I? And, no, the red flights DOES care about others! You're lying! GO AWAY!

_Oh, am I? What about the blue flight? They could have sent the aspects to calm Malygos, but instead, they killed him. They killed the leader of the blue flight. When Neltharion went mad, did they try to pin him down and free his mind? No, they have declared war on the black flight! Extinction! When Ysera fought the nightmare, when the bronze fought the Infinite, did the red flight lift even a CLAW to help? No! The red flight cares about none but itself, and do not even fight in the mortal wars to preserve lives that would perish without their interference! They did not do anything against the Scourge except defend themselves!_ No. No that was wrong. All lies! All... lies. I don't... want to think about it. I don't want... to think... about... anything. My eyes shut again.

When I next opened my eyes, my situation had gone from bad to worse. I was curled up tight in my shell, hardly any room at all. Most of my liquid was gone, drained into my body. I saw the other eggs around me. Were they all feeling the same voice from the liquid? No, no it couldn't be. I was the only one the wrong-things touched, the only one who's liquid they... changed. But, then how did their eggs get to be like that. Was it possible that eggs like... mine, could come from a brood-mother?

_Yes, quite possible. Unlikely, but possible. Who knows, one day you might have your own brood!_ I mentally snarled at the voice. I don't know why I did that. I was supposed to be peaceful! What was happening to me? Every voice of reason in my head was going off, telling me to hatch _right NOW_ and fly as far away from this place as I could, but ever single one of my instincts told me to stay here and, and trust the voice.

_Yes, you can trust me. Have I led you astray yet? _I wanted to scream at it that yes, it had, that everything it had told me about the red flight was a LIE! But I couldn't. It was... it was right, wasn't it? No, NO! That's what it wants you to think? Don't you get it? The wrong-things changed the egg and liquid, and the liquid is changing your instincts and now, your mind! Don't let it. Don't... let... it. As I thought this my strength left my mind, like the liquid was taking it away from me as punishment, and I fell asleep again.

How long have I been here, listening to the irate ramblings of the voice? I don't know, I don't care. I have all but run out of room in my shell, I need to hatch soon. I _need_ to hatch soon. The voice was right. It showed me... visions. Of the War of the Ancients, how the reds refused to help Neltharion. The Nexus war, how they were so quick to abandon diplomacy. How the bronze and green toiled by themselves, unaided by the queen of the dragons, a red dragon. Slowly my thoughts twisted. I tried to fight it for so long, but you can't argue the truth. The red flights allowed the mortals to sit back and end more lives than if they had simply been eradicated. I saw all this, it was all _true_. My instincts had solidified into their final form. I opened my mouth, a small bit of nourishing liquid entering my mouth, rushing over my fangs. I licked my tongue over my teeth. Soon. Very soon.

_NOW!_ I twitched at the intensity behind the liquid's voice. I smashed my face into the hard sides of my egg, teething and clawing at it. The paralysis had let up. I wasn't weak. I was strong. Scratch marks started to form. I could feel myself seizing up in anticipation. What would this new world be like? To be in the air, away from this liquid, which while enlightening, is still simply foul, to be able to move, to see how big the world is? I clawed and bit and smashed my skull into the egg's shell. I had to get out. I wanted to get out. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to hatch. My egg is cracking. Streaks of dull gray light are inside, highlighting me. I can see myself clearly. The once no-doubt red, hideous scales were now a lovely deep indigo.

Small black flecks circle around me. I close my eyelids to prevent one from hitting my eye. I keep clawing furiously. I was so close. _So close!_ I felt the cracks merge. The light exploded into my egg, and a new force took hold of me. I felt solid, right, and I was moving straight down and out with my fluid.

I flowed out onto something hard like my shell, but it stretched infinitely, it didn't move around my body like my shell did. Small bits of liquid were around me. I tried to get up, flap my wings into the air like my instincts told me, but my body failed me! Why was I so much weaker out here than in the liquid? I should be strong! I noticed the other whelps hatching. They all seemed weak. I tried desperately to move my wings. Eventually, blood started flowing through them. I could move them. I tried to get up and grip the air. Oh the air! I hadn't even noticed it!

The air was the most wonderful thing ever! I felt it flowing in and out of my body like some cleansing fluid, but so smooth, and none of it remained behind! Each breath I felt brought strength. The fear that had been resting like a stone in my crop since that faithful day my brood-mother abandoned me evaporated on the spot. I flapped my wings. I could move. I could fly. I could grip the air and soar. Then me eyes rested on the other whelps, still struggling to move their wings from the atrophy of being in their eggs for I don't know how long. My instincts flared up; the first fight I'd ever have. The strong survive on, the weak die early so as not to hinder the others. But not yet, I thought. Let them get up. Let them fly. I'll have a blast ready for them. I brought dark blue flames rolling into my crop. Bring it on, sisters and brothers. I'm ready.

The first five took to the air. Three of them instantly took to each other, clawing and blasting and winging each other, the other two making a beeline for me. I chuckled darkly in my mind, and fired my first blast, true to my aim, the spit of twilight energy shot a hole clean through their wing, and the weakling soon found themselves grounded, unable to do anything, while the victor from the other three-way brawl came to finish them off. The other whelp smashed into me in a flurry of fangs and claws, but I wasn't going to be beaten. I threw my sister off and slashed through her throat scales, the dark purple blood spilling out as fast as I had out of my egg, a fatal wound, exhilarating. I looked at the dozens of tiny fights going on.

Maybe I was supposed to be a red whelp originally.

I fire another blast at a whelp, hitting my brother square in the chest as his unusually weak chest-scales caved in, a failure that I would _not_ allow to spread to the rest of our-_my_- flight.

But being twilight is so much better.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	2. Chapter 2:Whelp

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>Our fight soon ended. Out of the original two dozen of my siblings only eight survived, myself included, collapsed on the cold flat-shell in exhaustion. I had gotten in more fights than any of the others, and I have the scars to prove it. I took in deep breaths of the air, not because I needed it, but because it just felt <em>so <em>nice after who knows how long of living in that foul liquid _talking_ to me. I heard sounds, like _clack, clack, clack_. A shadow moved across the place where the flat-shell curved up at a sharp angle. A strange creature walked in. It's skin was blue, and it had a bony crest on it's forehead, with tendrils hanging down near it's neck with bands of something yellow and shiny on them. It was standing on it's hind legs, which looked oddly bent inside it's coverings,

It- he, I think it was a he, had loose-fitting coverings on him, purple and black, bending easily with his motions. He looked at us and his 'mouth' curved upwards, like the bottom of my broken egg.

"Ah, you're done, come along. Come along. I'm to take you to your instructor." I looked at my brothers and sisters, the only strong ones besides me, and we all started to fly after the blue-thing, ignoring our muscles screaming in protest. He led us down a long corridor, lined with strange yellow lights, purple colors and black _spikes_ like had been on my egg when I was still, ha, red. I looked around in wonder. What was this place? I saw a green swirly thing infront of us, the blue-thing walking right up to it and turning around.

"This is the portal, go through it. Your guardian will be out there." I nervously looked around, and took a deep breath. I am a member of the twilight whelp. I can do this. I fly into the portal, and green light wraps around me. I take several deep breaths of air, to steady my nerves in the face of this brave new world I was now part of.

The green faded away and I saw... big. I was on a purple hard-thing, much harder than my shell, with a hollowed out purple and black gate behind me, holding the portal's other half. Around me the world stretched farther than I could see. It was amazing. I set myself down to just take it all in, and my siblings did too.

All around above me was a dark purple thing, higher than I could see, like a gigantic egg around me, spanning farther than I could see. Out of one egg and into another. I crawled over to the edge of the hard-purple, using my wing tips as forelegs, since my real forelegs were still small. I looked down, and immediately pulled my head back. I was higher up than I thought ever existed in the world, twisting spires of gray snaking up to my hard-purple, violet flames channeling up through them, a gigantic span of purple all around the world, connected to the purple-shell at some far away point.

There were structures on this purple, rigid-things in this thing my instincts were telling me was called 'ground', covered with soft things. More things moved around far below like the blue-thing had, on their hind legs, but each one looked different than the other. But it's the things flying around below us that caught my attention. _Twilight drakes_. They soared up and around, gracefully playing with the updrafts and winds as though it were nothing. I lost myself in the motions of one, swooping and sailing around amazingly fast. I was so caught up in this I almost didn't hear the beating of wings through the cold, unusually cold air. Oh the air was cold!

I hadn't noticed it until now, but this new world was cold. My liquid may have been foul for a long time, but it was still warm, my egg keeping my body heat reflected back to me, keeping me warm. But out here there was nothing to reflect my heat back except the purple-shell far away, and I didn't think that would do much. I was cold, reminding me of the terrifying moments when I was a small red whelp, when the wrong-things would come and hurt me.

Something big landed on the hard-purple.

I looked at it and immediately I thought it was my brood-mother, but then I looked again. My brood-mother was a red dragon, this was a deep shade of purple, her piercing green eye slits looking down at us. She made a laughing sound in her throat.

"So, this is the newest batch of whelps? Such a shame, I was told twenty-four hatched, only a third of you survived? Disappointing. My name is Valiona. Follow me." Valiona flapped her massive wings, the air moving from it, blasting me off my back. The air hit me! I'll show it! I fired a blast at the air around me, watching it move on, doing nothing, before dissipating into dark blue smoke. I couldn't get back at the air. Blast it! Valiona was suspended in the air, beating her gigantic wings over and over. I realized shamefully I was the only one not flying, and proceeded to do so.

"Blasting the air for hitting you? That's a new one. Come along, I suppose. I'll have to deal with you until you become drakes, and then I can _finally_ go back to the Bastion and deal with my pathetic excuse of a brother" Valiona scowled something about being obsessed with his stupid pretty mirror and turned around, flying towards the part of the ground that was spiked up around us, bumpy and rough, but a little circle in the middle with holes into the ground. The circle-ground was filled with carcasses that had been skeletonized, by previous whelps no doubt.

Valiona landed with a dull _thump_ in it, the relatively small region making her imposing size even more intimidating. She was my superior. If I make her wish my death there would be nothing I can do about it. But I would not kiss up to her. I would say what I mean, only the weak pretend to be nice, and then they get trampled by those who are not afraid to speak their mind, not afraid to act. I quickly flew near a hole in the circle-ground, staying flying, looking at Valiona.

"You'll be staying here for a while, until you can become drakes. You whelps, however pathetically strong you think you are, can not hunt. While I have no problem letting you all starve to death and carry on with my own life, Cho'gall made it VERY clear I am to" Valiona shuddered, her wings shaking, some of her battle-loosened scales rattling against each other. "_babysit_ you. Find a cave. I have to go find the natural-borns now and bring them here." Natural-born? What did that mean? Valiona raised her mass onto her hind legs and leaped a small distance into the cold air, flapping to stay aloft, and twisting around, heading to some distant place.

I looked down at my hole, what had Valiona called it? A cave? I looked down at my cave. It was a little round hole deep in the ground, large enough for me to fit in comfortably and then some, but I'd grow. It smelled like twigs and leaves, and I assumed previous whelps made nests in it and burned them when it was time for them to go, so new whelps could make their own. Good. No claw-holding in this world. I settled down into it, the impossibly large world being reduced to me, the ground around me, and a very dark purple-shell above me. If I focused hard enough I could almost imagine that I was still in my shell, before the wrong-things hurt me, before my brood-mother abandoned me, when there had just been peace. I couldn't sleep. I knew I shouldn't. I had to stay awake. If I showed that I would fall asleep so easily, I would be seen as weak and killed. I was _not _weak. So I allowed my mind to wander around.

I thought about what mysteries this world might have. When the liquid showed me the war of the ancients it only showed glimpses of this 'well of eternity'. Did it still exist? That vision was quite a while ago, but if it existed, I would go seek it out as soon as possible. That power... I would never be considered weak again if I could tap it.

What about the other flights? I was a member of the strongest flight in existence, but what were we supposed to actually _do?_ Just harass the other flights? Wipe them out? Enslave them? Beat sense into them? What? I let my thoughts ramble on to all sorts of things, what were the wrong-things, how could those creatures on the ground move on their hind legs, all sorts of things. I heard a loud flapping and I flew out of my cave (Before anybody else) to see Valiona with a dozen other twilight whelps respectfully behind her... spiked tail. I flicked my tail. I didn't have the spiked club that she did. Would it eventually grow?

Valiona landed, and the other twelve followed suit. Only one kept flying. Valiona shook her head, her loose scales rattling.

"Now, you first-borns need some explanation. I had a longer flight with the natural-borns so I've already told them. As you know you are newly hatched members of the twilight dragonflight. We twilight dragons are born in two different ways. The first way is what you are, first-borns. You're eggs are from other flights, in your case the red" The natural-born that had kept flying chuckled in his throat." Valiona glared at him.

"I heard that." She smacked her tail into the ground next to him, the air blast sending him flying into the bumpy-tall-ground.

"As I was saying, natural-borns are born when a twilight dragon becomes a brood-mother. Now, not many of us live that long. Even fewer actually choose to become brood-mothers. I could never imagine _willingly_ creating more of you idiotic whelps. Now if you excuse me, I must go hunt for you, since you are too weak to do it yourself. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Cho'gall gave me a list of names to give you. Well, let's get it over with." Valiona went around us, blasting each of us with a tiny twilight meteor that we dodged, giving us each a name.

"Telarion. Fuluthlion. Asteriona. Hemeriona." She went along, more and more. She blasted the natural-born that had kept flying when the others didn't. They were weaklings, but then again, Valiona did say that they had a longer flight. I shook my head. That was no excuse.

"Verthelion" She turned to me. I quickly took to the sky, but Valiona fired at me anyway. I let this strange downward pull take me out of harm's way.

"Selriona." I didn't focus on the other names she gave out. I had a _name_. Something to identify me from all others, one that made me my own being, other than just where I had my scars or which cave I had. I was _somebody_ now. Not just a nameless whelp Valiona despised. I was Selriona. And nothing and no-one would ever change that. Valiona finished giving out names.

"Well, I'm _finally_ done. For now." She sighed. "Honestly, why did Cho'gall choose me, not Desperiona? She has experience with being a brood-mother." Valiona kept muttering these things as she flew away. The others all chose a cave and probably went to sleep. I looked up. The purple-shell wasn't purple anymore, it was black. It was time to sleep. But I had another idea. I flew out of the circle-ground and located a tall brown tough-think sticking out of the ground with green furry things sticking out of it. I grabbed a large clump of them in my mouth and claws and flew it back up to my cave.

That stuff was _heavy_. By the time I got back up, fighting against a stronger downward pull than before, I was at the end of my tether. I dropped the twigs and leaves into my cave and sunk down into it. My first... day in the outside world. My mind was still restless from youth. Just before I sunk into sleep, I thought that maybe there was another world beyond this purple-shell that was now black, one even bigger and more mysterious.

I woke up to a terrible burning feeling, and let out a shriek of pain. This wasn't as bad as what the wrong-things did, but it was a new kind, like somebody were driving sharp-things into my eyes and pulling them out, before shoving them back in to repeat. I kept my eyelids closed, slowly getting used to the light, before opening my eyes and taking in a quick gasp of sweet, sweet air.

The purple-shell was a bright, brilliant sky blue. Maybe... yes that's why! It's called the sky. Small white things crossed over it. I flew out of my cave, being careful to not look at the giant fireball in the purp- the sky. There was something in the circle-ground. It smelled... really good. I looked over and saw a clump of something red. My eyes instantly widened and I propelled myself full speed at the dismembered stag, eating all I could, the other whelps eating from some other stags, some from mine. I had no problems with that; that stag was HUGE! Not as big as Valiona, nowhere close, but still huge.

The following year passed fast. Verthelion turned out to be the strongest whelp in his group, just like I was the strongest in my clutch. He was easy to be around, we were friendly to each other. Fuluthlion and Asteriona were good friends too. Fuluthlion was from my group, but Asteriona wasn't, she was one of the natural-borns. Don't picture us like mortal children, bouncing around, giggling, because we were _not_. We fought among each other, bit each other, and we learned slowly about the world by bouncing thoughts off of each other. I practiced my aim with my blasts. I could hit Verthelion from across the circle-ground where we stayed. Every night I looked down at the patrolling drakes, flying so gracefully. And to think, one day I'd be one of them!

I dreamed that night that I actually was one, executing barrel rolls and dives as easily as I breathed. I felt some heat along my tail, my SPIKED tail. Then something red exploded around me. I was falling, falling, falling...

I woke up with a strangled gasp, having grown to snugly fit my cave.

Valiona taught us about the world, how the mortals could not be trusted, and would kill us on sight except for the Twilight's hammer. Telarion asked if there was a reason they were called the same thing we were, but she shook her head irritatedly.

"No. A coincidence."

She taught us how we'd hunt, where you need to clamp your jaws, all that vital stuff. There you are, you're doing it again. You're picturing a couple deep indigo whelps inside a wooden building fluttering above their seats with Valiona in a mortal form lecturing us. We learned through _experience_. We saw what happened when non-cult mortals found one of us, when the red flight strafed along the ground, what happened to non-cult mortals who pretended they were in the cult. I learned a surprising amount of information in a surprisingly short amount of time being around the bastion.

I fluttered up to Fuluthlion looking down at the Twilight's hammer mortals training, sparring among themselves. He looked at me.

"Just think. Soon we'll be able to go down there with them. It won't just be the twenty of us. We'll have all the other drakes to talk to, and the mortals, and we'll be able to _help_ Nelthar-Deathwing's cause. Kill a hundred now and wipe them out, or let them stay alive and kill millions over time." I nodded.

"Yes. I don't understand why the other mortals don't understand this. But once we've taken over the world, well, things will be better. Let the Burning legion come, they won't stand a chance!"

"No they won't. We'll just call Algalon, have him bring the titans, boom, boom, demons wiped out, world saved, stag's on us." I flexed my left wing infront of me, taking in the soft purplish webbing. It had once been red. It _should_ have been red. I was glad it wasn't but I still didn't forget the fact that it should be red. What was I? Was I a red whelp turned into a twilight one? Or was I just a red whelp inside a twilight's body? I shook the thought. I was a twilight whelp-soon-to-be-drake. Nothing more. Nothing less. I was the strongest in my clutch, and second only to Hemeriona, who'd since became stronger than Verthelion, who was just as tough as I was. I thought back to how little I knew when I had hatched, and laughed.

What would past-me have thought about current me? Another thought crossed my mind, wracking me with sorrow that I despised. What would, what would my brood-mother think of me? She had abandoned me, but what if she had _cause?_ What if she was forced to leave me? If I found her again, would she accept me? Would she shun me? Kill me? That thought unnerved me. My own brood-mother _killing _me. The reds were not kind to other flights, but would she really do that? Would she even recognize me, believe me if I told her my relation to her? I shook my head to clear my thoughts. No, Selriona. You don't think of red dragons as people. They left you in the hands of the wrong-things, the faceless ones, and didn't give you a second glance. I looked over at Fuluthlion, and he looked at me before speaking.

"Almost time. To, you know. Become drakes." Fuluthion had some flames coming out of his mouth. I didn't say anything, let him figure it out for himself. "Once we become drakes we can actually fight, actually _help_, not just sit here and waste Valiona's ti- AAAH!" Aaand there you go folks! Fuluthlion burned himself. I rolled my eyes.

"Moron."

"I am not a moron. You've done that more times than I have!" I growled at him. It was true, I have burned myself several times, the scales on my mouth are covered in a fine layer of soot. A distant roar sounded, but not a dragon's roar. An un-natural one, coming from far to the north. The ugly-toothed-tentacle one in the ground, chilling me to my bones, a harsh reminder of my days in the malformed hands of the faceless. I looked up at the darkening sky, the darkening purple-shell. I smiled in spite of myself. No matter how much I learned, the sky would always be the purple-shell to me. Always. Some things you just didn't grow out of. I fluttered back to my cave, it was the time to sleep now. I looked at the twigs and branches that had made the cave soft, and fired a blast at it, watching them turn to ashes glowing a dark blue flame. I realized, I had left my old life well and truly behind now. Gone were the days of Valiona bringing food, flinging off ill-mannered comments nobody cared about. I'd feed myself, I'd hydrate myself, I'd sleep by myself(I hope). I couldn't wait. I fell asleep in the cave, taking up all the space, wrapping my wings around me.

I couldn't help but think about my brood-mother, wherever she may be. No matter what I told myself, I still cared about her. She may have abandoned me, but I thought back to those earlier days, when I just had my darkness, my clean liquid, and her motherly, soothing voice. What had happened to those days? I looked at the bones of an unfortunate doe. A newly hatched dragon can not go back to their shell. They can never go back to the simplicity of before. A meteor streaked across the sky, falling somewhere into the ocean where nobody cared. I was about to become a feared twilight drake, superior to all other drakes, fear of even some dragons, terror of the skys. Hmm, terror of the skys. Twilight sky-terror. I like the sound of that. I fell asleep, ready to face whatever life had in store tomorrow. Not as a red whelp in another body. Not as a twilight whelp. But as Selriona.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	3. Chapter 3:Drake

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or the sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Congratulations to anyone who finds the Portal (Property of Valve) reference in here!**

* * *

><p>The air screamed over my wings, down my back, tickling the faint white scar I had running down my back from my first day in the world. I tucked my wings in close to my body, the wind pounding my face so fast it felt like I was just falling through a void as I dived straight down. I brought deep blue flames into my crop. The ground was getting closer. A thousand yards. 800. 500. 200! I extended my wings and angled up as fast as I could, letting loose a spray of twilight flames in a strafe along the battlefield, charring the mortals who weren't fast to get out, horribly burning those who jumped out fast, and sealing off the combatants on our side as mages tried desperately to put out the flames with conjured liquid and summoning elementals on top of it. With my speed, the flames dispersed far and wide. I angled up and spun, trying to burn off my residual speed with eventual success. I loved flying. Ever since I could fly like this I've been doing it almost nonstop. There's no feeling quite like it. The freedom of the air, looking at gravity and laughing at it, and no matter how high I went I never reached the purple-shell.<p>

I flew up to a mountainside, where Verthelion was sitting on his haunches with a stupid smirk on his fangs. I landed next to him, watching the battle below.

"Props for the speed, but watch and learn, Selriona. You hardly hit any of them!" Verthelion took off into the air and simply flew down towards the battle, the mortals pressing up the base of the camp, the ominous spire of the Bastion of Twilight looming in the distance. I laughed as Verthelion simply flew along side the battlefield, letting loose all his flames. He moved slowly though, so he couldn't cover a long line, but he sprayed a sort of square with the flames before angling back to me. Now it was my turn to smirk. Honestly though, I was embarrassed that he had hit more foes than I had. But I would _never_ admit that infront of him.

"Nice spread with the flames, but way too slow." I fired a little blast at him, which caught him on the edge of the nose. "Boom, shot you down." Verthelion shook his head and sat next to me.

"You know those mortals are always too busy cowering away to do that"

"They don't always. Remember Hemeriona?" I regretted the words as soon as they were out. His head dipped a little. Hemeriona hadn't been my sister, but she had been his.

"Of course. Every day. But the odds of that happening again-"

"Are very big. I mean, how do you even stay in the air flying so slow?" Now it was his turn to claw me across the face. I wasn't going to take this! I blasted flames at his face, but he ducked and pounced at me, pinning me to the ground, where I heard the gurgling sound that signaled an imminent flame breath. I whipped my tail up from the ground and caught him where the base of his tail met his body with my spiked club. He howled in pain and fell off of me, the shadowy flames burning the air next to me.

I jumped up and pinned Verthelion under me, digging my claws into his exposed stomach, releasing a small amount of purple blood.

"Give up?" He smiled evilly.

"Of course I do, NOT!" A burst of blue came from his mouth, and a small spherical blast of flame caught me in the neck, throwing me off of him, right off the mountain. I twisted around in the air and angled up, to find Verthelion soaring after me, as I coughed, trying to re-open my throat. I grinned. The air was where I ruled. He could never keep up with me here. I flew high into the air, Verthelion flapping after me. He was catching up. I laughed in my throat. Not for long. Quick as a viper I tucked my wings against my side and dived again. A cloud of steam splashed against my face as I dove into the Wetlands. I flew straight up, spinning my body around, scratching Verthelion across the face with the talons on them. He couldn't angle back up in his surprise as I did barrel rolls around his pathetic flying skills.

_THUD_.

Well, he landed... sorta. I flew back to where the noise had come from. Verthelion was laying on the wet soil, not moving. Oh dear. Oh dear. What did I just do? I walked over to him. I didn't hear anything. He wasn't breathing. Oh titans I KILLED HIM! I looked over him. I didn't want to kill him! Just maybe dislocate a wing, break a rib at the most. I didn't... didn't...

"Verthelion... I-I'm so sorry. I didn't, I didn't-." His eyes snapped open and he jumped up at me, taking in a deep gulp of air, pinning me to the ground on my sides. I couldn't suppress a snarl at him. "YOU JERK!" He smiled and got off of me.

"I believe I win?" I growled at him again, but I knew that I was emotionally exhausted from thinking I had killed him.

"Oh sure, this time. I'll get back, just wait" He smiled.

"No doubt you will. Let's get back to the highlands and-" He stopped silent. "Feel that?" I did. I felt a little pulsing on the outside of my head, where my right ear-plate was. It was like a tingling, or the G.R.A.D.A.R. devices I had seen one of the gnome cultists developing. There was a red whelp nearby. I could feel wherever there were reds. There was a red whelp to my right.

"Yeah, I feel it. My turn now?" He nodded, and I took off to the whelp. The wetlands were sticky, wet and smelled like swamp, which, in all honesty, makes sense. I jumped across the logs, and tripped slipped and fell onto a stump, which I promptly burned to cinders. The fire caught, and the dampness kept it from spreading, and soon a pile of ashes lay infront of me. A crocolisk looked at me, at the ashes, back at me, and fled. The tingling was getting stronger, and it was still infront of me. Almost there. I crept up more, inhaling the scent of the red whelp. I broke through the brush, and saw the whelp.

It wasn't moving.

The red whelp was caught in a bear trap, no doubt set out for one of the wild animals that lurked through here. How the thing managed to get caught by something designed for land dwelling creatures I could not fathom, but nevertheless, there it was, whimpering slightly, it's right hind leg caught in the metal spikes, the bone showing, red blood tinging the drenched soil around it, tiny flowers blooming where it came in contact with the earth. The whelp seemed unconscious, it didn't know I was here. I heard it's little heart fluttering amazingly fast, so it wasn't dead. It's heart was beating _very_ fast. Much faster than mine- oh. It's pretending to be passed out, maybe even trying to play dead so I'd leave it alone. I bent down next to it's head.

"You can't fool me, whelp" Immediately it's eyes shot open, looking at me. So odd. I could so easily have wound up like it, but instead I was _abandoned_ and turned twilight. While I'm not sad about changing, knowing that my own brood-mother left me hurt. My sadness turned into hatred at the whelp. What was different about this one that it wasn't abandoned? Why was I left to be hurt at the hands of the faceless while he was not? Flames started rolling in my crop. I growled in my throat.

"Please... please don't kill me" I narrowed my eyes at this whelp. Who was he to ask me to not kill him? I was dominant here! Flames started leaking out of my mouth, singing the flowers around the whelp's body and sterilizing the earth before I could hold them back.

"You aren't in a position to ask for ANYTHING, whelp. Be happy that I'll make it quick." I took a deep breath and sprayed all of my accumulated flames onto the whelp, who screeched in pain. Twilight flames are special. Normally when they touch something, they act almost like normal flames, with a little bit of shadow magic woven into it. Ok, a lot of shadow magic. But when touching a dragonkin of a different flight, it becomes like a burning adhesive, sticking to the scales and burning continuously until the victim either dies or has it removed. Most of the time it's the former. The whelp was soon covered in dark blue flames, writhing in pain as the flames burned through him. I turned around and looked at him one last time.

"I didn't say it wouldn't hurt." In seconds, all that would be left of the whelp would a pile of fertile ashes.

Verthelion had pretended to fall asleep by the time I got back, so why not have a little fun? I grinned evilly, and spat a fireball at his chest. He instantly woke up and curled up, groaning.

"You can't fool me, Verthelion" He looked at me and grinned through his grimace.

"Oh really, and what did I do when you though I was-" I cut him off.

"DON'T even start with that. If you ever do that again, I will make sure you aren't pretending for long." He rolled his eyes.

"You're a good friend too, Selriona." Verthelion took to the air again. I grinned, and followed him. However irritating he was, Verthelion was a good friend, and I made sure to annoy him just as much. Or maybe I had annoyed him and he thought he was getting back at me? No, I'm pretty sure I'm right. I looked around at the purple-shell around us, the indigo webbing on my wings blending in perfectly. I spotted a mountain ram on the hills, and swooped down, clamping my throat on it's neck while still moving, snapping it instantly. It didn't even have time to bleat. I carried it up with me, chewing on it, and Verthelion laughed at me.

"You look so amazingly stupid with a ram in your mouth."

"Ffuut uf, Erelon!"

"What was that? I think you have something stuck in your teeth." I gulped down the last of the meat I wanted and spat the carcass down.

"I said Shut up Verthelion!" The portal to the interior of the Bastion of Twilight was coming up. One of the cultists came out and was waving at us, shouting. It was a human male, I think. His face was hooded.

"Selriona and Verthelion, right?" A 'yes' from next to me.

"Cho'gall told me to inform you you are being put on Bastion patrol duty starting tomorrow, shift A, and you are to see Halfus Wyrmbreaker for... I don't know. I wasn't told. But he says it's of utmost urgency. Well, Cho said that. Gal just kept screaming something about the Master, the Hammer, and that the cake wasn't true." The mortal shrugged. Okay, better not keep Halfus waiting! Don't want to join his, ugh, collection. A shudder ran through me, and I dropped into the portal.

The same old green mist, then the same old hallway. There were four phase traps all around the hallway, and there was no way in all the hells in existence that those were _safe_. I made sure to fly as far away from all of them as I possibly could. Turn right, and there he is, Halfus Wyrmbreaker. Yelling echoed through the halls; Valiona and her brother Theralion were at it again.

"Stop looking at your pathetic little mirror, Theralion! We have preparations to make for engulfing duty!"

"Pathetic little mirror? You underestimate what this mirror can do! It enhances my abilities, my flames burn brighter-"

"All it 'enhances' is your ego you useless waste of space!"

"Oh I'm useless am I? Then how come I am sent more messengers than you?"

"BECAUSE CHO'GALL ENJOYS NAGGING AT YOU YOU MORONIC GLUTTON!"

"Glutton? GLUTTON? I'll show you who's a-" A piercing, low voice echoed through the halls. Cho'gal,

"SILENCE! Both of you cease your incessant blabber IMMEDIATELY!(Quiet, quiet, all the Master wants is silence. Silence of life!) Oh shut up" I tore myself away from the, err, colorful conversation and looked back at Halfus.

The giant-even for his kind-ettin also had an unusually large brain, err, brains. He turned around, wafts of shadow energy coiling around him. Where was Sally, his proto-dragon guardian?

"Oh good, you two are here." He walked over to the sleeping, or maybe passed out, bronze drake, and kicked it sharply. I winced in spite of myself. The drake groaned and opened a bloodshot eye, and looked pleadingly at the mace in Halfus' hand.

"Accelerate their aging. _Now_, or suffer consequences" The bronze drake looked at us, then back at Halfus. Wait, what did he mean accelerate our aging? Only two drakes were chosen from each clutch to become dragons ahead of time, the strongest male and strongest female, also becoming mates and-

Oh no.

Oh dear titans no.

I've only been a drake for two years! Dragons can't fly with this agility!

"There is no possible consequence worse than doing that" Halfus delivered another sharp kick.

"How about starving, then being suspended by chains a few inches from the lava pool, with blades on the chains DIGGING INTO YOUR FLESH, SUPERHEATED?" The bronze winced again, and both me and Verthelion followed suit. The bronze drake looked at us, and took a deep breath. Then the last person I expected to reject this spoke up.

"Wait! How is this in any way safe?" Verthelion's question caught me off guard, but he was right. This couldn't be safe! It was a bronze drake for titans sake! Then a stream of sand slammed into me head on, and I blacked out with the sound of something fast-forwarding.

_I woke up in my cave, blinking the sharp stabbing pains of the sun out of my eyes. Today was the day. The day I'd become a drake. Everyone in my clutch was yammering, when Valiona appeared in the circle-ground out of nowhere. Instantly the silence was deafening. _

"_Oh great, you're all awake. The transition to being a drake is magical. Of course your bodies need to be a certain age to be able to handle the magic, or you'd burn to cinders. And what a _shame_ that would be." Valiona's scales bristled with shadow energy, a shadow nova pent up and just waiting to be unleashed. I knew Valiona well enough by now to know what that meant; she had been talking with Theralion recently. "Alright, follow me." She faded again. There was a great crack, and Valiona seemed to be pulled into herself, leaving a shimmering black hole on the ground where she stood only moments before. I looked at Asteriona uncertainly. She shrugged, her wings temporarily breaking out of flapping to move up and down, before resuming. She flew in, and vanished just as Valiona had, pulled into the black hole. I forced down the fear residing in my crop and flew into the hole._

_The shadows engulfed me, and I was reminded of the days I longed for, in my egg, only my thoughts, clean liquid and endless black all around me, but in an instant it ended. I looked around. I was in the same place, the same circle-ground. But there was only me, Asteriona and Valiona off to a side, which did nothing to make her seem less imposing and... giant. The world seemed to be covered in a thick purple haze, like the white kind that sometimes hung on the vast-blue-liquid in the distance at the start of each day. Quickly, the others of my clutch popped in the weird purple-world. Valiona sighed._

"_Oh great, you're all alive. Perfect. Spread out." We all did as she told us. I looked at Verthelion, silently asking what was going to happen. Valiona took a deep breath, and exhaled. More shadow energy rippled along her scales, and then it happened. The energy pooled onto her stomach, then dropped like a rock onto the circle-ground below her, and spread out like a ring, exploding upwards as it did so. I watched as Telarion was smashed by the wave and collapsed. Then the purple and black wave, which was dark and bright at once, smashed into me, and a searing agony exploded in my body, then subsided, and I collapsed, still conscious but unable to move. There was a seething torrent of voices rushing along my body like a river of liquid, then it stopped. I floated up. I looked down and saw myself laying on the ground. I floated up, up above myself, my clutch-mates all collapsed, Valiona laying down to rest._

_My body, or rather whatever I was seeing, fluttered and raced across the world. It was so BIG! And I was going so FAST! Green and brown and black and red and orange flew over my sight before I slowed down. My fake-body was limp and not in my control. I arrived in a little indent in the ground, like the circle-ground that I had lived in for a year. Green grass filled it, blue and purple flowers, red eggs... red eggs? I looked at the circle-ground. There were a few dozen spiked, red eggs in the space, with a dragon that looked like Valiona in the middle, laying down, but the scales were a glistening ruby._

_A growl escaped my throat, then my fake-body shot onward. I seemed to soar across the outside world faster than possible, so fast I couldn't make out even the slightest of details._

_I slowed down and the path led me back to engulfing darkness, and the voices from my liquid returned._

Well well, we meet again. _The voice laughed._ How have you been this past year, hmm?_ I snarled at the voice. Shut up._

My my, testy aren't we? That's alright, my servants made you like that. _WHAT servants?_

Oh, don't you know? Last we spoke I believe you called them wrong-things? _My mind recoiled in horror. The voice... it was to the wrong-things as Deathwing was to Cho'gal? What? How? The voice laughed. Not the light hearted laugh it had been giving me up until now, but a loud, maniacal laugh of madness, pounding against my fake-skull with each AHAHAHA!_

Indeed. I've come to see how you are progressing. One of the strongest, very nice. I may have use for you yet!_ I growled at it. I do not serve you! YOU made the wrong-things hurt me, didn't you? I swear I HEARD the voice sneer._

What if I did? Aren't you better for it?_ Well... yes._

So what is the problem? I sent the wrong-things to change your egg, despite the side effect of the pain. You overcame the pain, no? There was no lasting damage, right? I don't see the problem, fleshling._ Fleshing? More maniacal laughter beating my fake-skull. _

Well, I have a very nice plan written out for you. Meeting with the dragonqueen under truce, some well placed flames... _NO! I AM NOT GETTING NEAR HER! The voice chuckled._

We'll see. I'll be watching you, Selriona. _My fake-body flew back across the ginormous world and back into my real-body. I sank into the darkness, feeling my body twisting, morphing, growing and changing shape. _

I woke up on the ground, my head facing Verthelion. We were both laying on the ground, slit pupils looking at each other, and I felt like Valiona had just sat on me. I groaned and slowly got up.

"Ugh. What happened?"

"Well... I think that the normally century long process of being old enough to become dragons..."

"Yes?"

"Was shortened to the next two years for us. Oh yeah, we're also destined to be mates as a result. How are you going to deal with the loss of flying so fast?" I shook my head.

"I'll find a way. Maybe I'll get a new fascination with crushing stuff." Verthelion chuckled.

"Yes, I suppose that would work. Now, I'm going to go back to sleep. I swear there's a band of gnome musicians moving into my brain." Verthelion passed out, and I was right behind him.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Wow, 3 posts in 3 days, I wonder how long I can keep that up?  
><strong>


	4. Chapter 4:Losing

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or the sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>I flew next to Sadislion. He looked at me as I easily caught up to him, and sighed.<p>

"The infiltrator is down there. Come on, let's fry 'em." He dove down towards the upper levels of the cultist's camp, spraying a mortal with flames, and I was right behind him. Said mortal was an orc with olive green skin and covered simply head to toe in thick armor, swinging a gigantic green glowing axe in circles. He was simply ripping the cultist's apart, the blade was so incredibly sharp that it just cut through any attempt at blocking, and anyone who dodged it once did not dodge again the second time from the sheer speed it was going at. All the attacks were simply bouncing off the armor, none hitting the small bit of exposed skin at his head.

Me and Sadislion both showered the orc in blue flames, but by then he had destroyed any cultist attacking him, and brought that hideous green glowing axe in an upwards arc that cut my vulnerable stomach. I screeched in pain as he jumped up and grabbed my front legs in each hand, dropping his axe. The cut was more painful than it should have been for a cut not even as long as one of my claws. The injury was burning painfully, stinging almost, and it was spreading. Slowly, very very slowly, but still spreading out from the cut. Poison.

"Let go!", I hissed at him. The orc grunted and tightened his grip on my legs as I dove down, screaming through the air.

"Never!" I angled up as sharply as I could, spiraling up as fast as I could possibly go, kicking my legs. "You underestimate me, drake! I am Kor'kron! You're end is now." I take a deep breath through my nostrils, so he doesn't notice it. Bringing flames into my crop is all well and good for a simple fireball, but for a constant stream I need air to supply it. Most do this by taking in a deep breath of air and exhaling all the flames and air at once. If you fire the flames first and breathe out the air while the fireball is still in your mouth the flames will spread in a wide arc. However this makes it easy to predict, and while breathing in through my nostrils works, it takes longer to have the required amount of air.

"Not likely!" I sprayed the flames at him, catching him on the armor, heating it up to the point of being red. His gauntleted hands let go of my legs as he fell screaming in pain to the ground several hundred yards below. I saw something coming at me from my right and instantly let myself fall to the ground, the cannonball missing the spikes on my head by several centimeters. I dropped down onto a draenei's head, my claws splitting her head open as I jumped up to resume flight before an arrow could pierce the ogre behind where I just was. I flew back to my patrol, catching up with Verthelion. The mortals were pushing up the ramp fast. Skullcrusher had gone to inform Cho'gall about the developments, and of course, ingenious mortals all at once started pouring up the ramp, where the shadowy assassins held them off. Mostly.

_Mostly_.

The burning from the wound, the _scratch_, the axe inflicted was almost to my legs now, encompassing all of my stomach. I set down near a twilight healer and breathed to it,

"Help. Poison." The worgen female's eyes instantly contracted and focused. She disappeared inside a hut and yelled some things in the faceless language, before emerging with a vial and rolls of embersilk bandages.

"Lay down on your side. Like that, easy. Whoa..." I felt her furred hands running along the cut, and I winced in pain. She scraped something along the cut, and I hissed at her.

"My apologies, but I need a sample of the poison so I can develop an antidote. Unless I do the best I can do is slow it down." I groaned.

"How long?"

"Depends what kind it is. Hold still. I'm going to apply a sedative to slow your heart-rate, keep the venom from spreading as fast." I groaned, and felt her take a vile containing some sloshing orange liquid.

"Drink this." She placed the vial to my mouth and tilted, and I gulped it up. ARGH! That stuff was the bitterest stuff I have ever tasted. I started to choke, but forced myself to swallow it, and resumed choking. I licked my lips once I stopped. Huh, an aftertaste of orange. I felt the healer strapping bandages on my stomach. The warm cloth stuck to my scales like a fire does to wood, spreading a feeling of heat along the burning which was working it's way up my legs and body. I started to feel tired. My breathing slowed involuntarily. The healer got up.

"Stay there for now, do not exert yourself. The more you exert yourself the faster the poison will spread, and I need all the time I can get to develop the cure. Sleep if you can." She vanished into the hut. I sighed. I hated being unable to help. The cultists were fighting a losing battle down there, and more and more of the mortals were getting gutsy and coming up here. I wanted to help, but I couldn't. I would die, and THAT'S not something I want. I heard a whoosh of air next to me. Something- or rather somebody- landed next to me.

"Verthelion."

"I saw you get cut. How did that hurt you that much?" I groaned, shifting my head to bring him into eye shot.

"Poison on the axe. Pretty stupid of me, huh?" He chuckled.

"Yeah, I'll bet. I'm guessing you have to lay there to slow your heart?"

"Yep. Boring as all hells, but better than dieing. I'm going to try to sleep." He nudged my head with his.

"You do that. Try not to die." I was already pretending to sleep. "Um, Selriona?" He nudged me again, and sighed. "Typical." Another whoosh, and he was gone. It had been a month since our aging was accelerated. To be honest I was very nervous about becoming a dragon. I wouldn't be able to do barrel-rolls at _all_. I sighed, and drifted into a sort of semi-sleep, where I was still conscious, aware of my surrounding, but completely unable to move. I felt the burning slowly spread up my body, much slower than before. Noises drifted around me. I heard the clanking of metal boots, and something crouched down next to my stomach. I heard a female voice.

"You think it's alive?"

"Naw mon, dis drake be dead. No twilight drake would let us git dis close ta it." I wouldn't if my life depended on not moving! Also, being able to move would also help...

"You sure? It could be sleeping." SHE, not it. Imbeciles.

"Well, let me see. Dis blow horn would wake up inyone." BLLAAAAAAAARRRRRREEE! MY EAR PLATES! THAT STUPID, IDIOTIC MORON! I wanted to get up and claw him to death, but I still couldn't move.

"See? Nawt alive. Come on, mon, we got cultists ta kill."

The voices moved on. I heard somebody come close again and lightly shake my head. The nerve!

"Ok, I have the antidote. I can start treatment but for that you need to drink it. So wake up!" My body slowly relaxed and came back under my control, from the tip of my tail up to my head. The burning was getting painful now. I didn't even look at what the worgen was holding in her paws, I gulped it down, not even touching my tongue before it was in my crop and, soon after, stomach. The burning slowly retreated back to my cut, and then vanished all-together. I got up and flexed my legs. Perfect. I bowed my head to the worgen.

"Thank you." She returned the bow.

"Shurnab shurnab Cho'gall" I looked at her like she had grown another head, and flew back up. I caught up with Verthelion still flying around, keeping a lazy eye out for aerial enemies on out patrol shift. _Technically _I wasn't supposed to attack the ground forces, but, hey, what Cho'gall doesn't know won't hurt me! He looked at me.

"Hey! Good to see you're better." I smiled at him.

"Did I miss anything?"

"Not a thing. Not a thing at _all_. Of course we'd get the boring shift. Morning till noon, nothing ever happens there." Verthelion looked down at the mortals slowly pushing up the cliff."We're going to loose that location. There's no way just the cult can hold out. They'll have to retreat up the ramp and bottleneck them, but then they'll be sitting ducks to that artillery"

"No, there isn't a chance. I hope Cho'gall will _finally_ let us attack the ground forces. I don't see why we can't when we're not on our shift atleast!"

"Probably because it's 'below our dignity'." He scoffed. "As if! Those mortals are tough." A horn sounded off in the distance. Our shift was over.

"Well, that's our shift done. I'm going to go hunt, you?"

"Hmm, I'm going to go watch the red dragon captive, you know, Lirastrasza?" My eyes snapped back to him.

"You aren't going to torture her, right? She gets enough of that at the hands of the cult, and we don't want to break her mind."

"Yes, brood-mother, I won't torture her. Titans, just go hunt." I smiled in victory and dove for the woods. More cannons whizzed over me before I found cover in the forest. I set down silently and prowled across the grass, feeling it brush the cracks between my scales. I shivered from the tickling feeling, but kept my focus. I felt a little beeping on my head, signifying there was a red drake about a kilometer north. I looked up. Ah, the Vermillion retreat. Of course. I looked at a Gryphon hovering inches above the ground and licked my lips. Delicious.

I crouched down on my hind legs, and jumped out with all my strength. The gryphon squawked at my emergence and reared up, kicking me with those lion feet, making me fall on my back with my wings splayed on the ground. I snarled at it and waited as it flew up and angled down at me, going in for a dive bomb with that razor sharp beak at my exposed stomach, and I hit it on the side of the head with my tail-club, crushing it's skull. I rolled over and jumped on it, biting down on it's neck, and it instantly stopped moving.

My victory was short lived when I heard something rustle in the bush next to me. I got off of my prey, and looked at the source of the disturbance. An arrow flew at me, sticking harmlessly at the grass in between my claws. I started to laugh, but stopped. There was mist around the arrow, and began to develop upward, into a wall, an overhang, an arch, a prison of ice with an air pocket inside. I smashed my skull at the ice. It held fast. I spewed all the flames in my body at it, but it didn't even begin to melt. I felt exhaustion slowly creep into my muscles, and realization hit me all too fast; whoever my captor was meant for me to wear myself out, then kill me with ease. If I could lure them into a false sense of security...

I flopped down on the ice that had replaced the ground under me, breathing in frigid air heavily. A dwarf broke out of the brush with a gigantic golden bow, wood spiraling over the handles indicating kaldorei origin. The bow rippled with energy, raw magical power, and as the dwarf drew the bowstring back an arrow materialized in place. The arrow struck my ice prison with a dull 'crack', and it shattered all around me. The dwarf stepped over me.

"Aha, not so tough now are yeh?" He pulled the string back. That's when I pounced him, pinning the dwarf under me, my weight pushing down on him, but he just pushed back, holding my weight off, but by the shaking of his elbows I could tell it was taking everything he had. I wasn't really doing anything, I was just standing on him, but how the hells could he hold me up like that? The dwarf spun his body around under me, touched the ground with a finger, and jumped backwards an impossible distance, vanishing from my senses. I walked over to my kill and started to devour it, scorching off the feathers, ripping off the disgusting skin, but beyond that the muscles, ligaments and organs were very good, if a bit gamy.

I looked up at the sun. The purple-shell was getting dark. Damn, it's been that long? Better get back to my cave. I took to the skies and flew across the Twilight rise. The battle was going poorly. The flames at Cannon's inferno were much dimmer than usual. I hazarded a look and saw the reason; the blasted revenant was dead. How could he have died? He was extremely powerful, even the elementalists gave him a very wide berth, and the more enemies you sent against him the more terrible his lava splashes were. I angled further up. I saw my cave, or rather, the entrance to the path to my cave. I walked inside the maw of rocks, the sharpened stones looking disturbingly like a snake's fangs coming down to kill you.

The main path inside wasn't much better. Water dripped from stalactites, and I stepped on a stalagmite.

"HELL!" I tried to blast the offending rock with a fireball, but only a wheezing noise came out. Great, just great. I've exhausted my flames. I looked at the fading light glistening off of the moisture on the walls, creating a labyrinth of lights. I soon came up to the intersection. The tunnel split off, one to the left, one to the right.

I went right. My section was smooth, and I soon came to a large circular dome, similar in shape and smoothness to an egg, matted with twigs and branches. I sighed and fell onto the 'floor'. Off to the left would have been Verthelion. If I knew the stupid drake he'd be fast asleep by now. I closed my eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep.

I got up and stretched my wings, flapping them a few times to get blood flowing back into them. I shook my head, hearing the tell-tale crack of my neck that said I had slept 8 hours and had 1 hour before my shift started, so I'd better get going to arrive on time. I sauntered out of my cave, stopping once to look at the stalagmite that I had stepped on. I smiled vengefully, and blasted it into pieces. That felt good. I stepped outside and looked at the drop to the ground. Mortals would call it a 'dizzying' drop. I didn't understand that. How could looking at a drop make you dizzy? I jumped over the side and dove. The euphoria brought by wind whistling past your ear plates, the birds squawking terrified and parting before you, it never gets old. With a whoop I angled up and soared at an impossible speed towards the Bastion. The flight would take a while, though, and the shift even longer.

I flew to the Bastion and started to make the giant figure 8 around it, keeping a lazy eye out for aerial attackers. Like any would come! Who would be dumb enough to do that? Thermals from the twilight braziers, the diminishing flames of Cannon's inferno, and the inferno inside the Bastion made staying in the air practically effortless, warm air suspending me high above the earth. Verthelion flew up and started his own complex, random path just as the gong sounded, signaling that our shift had started. I looked down as the patrols went on and the sun got higher in the purple-shell. Not a _single_ aerial attacker.

I flew next to Aetheron's rock. The air ascendant had a weird, almost animalistic face with eyes that crackled with electricity. His hair had turned into a sort of plate on his head, extending back, with two horns on the front. His robes seemed to be whirling around him like a tornado, yet still in one place, and lightning crackled along his biceps. Winds swirled around him, and an arc of lightning connected him firmly to a portal. A little device helped stabilize the untamed energy he was channeling into the portal. There was a human in blue armor next to the device. Hold on, what?

There was a terrible clash of energy. The portal collapsed, and the arc of lightning seemed to curve back and strike Aetheron in the chest. His form collapsed. His winds slowed down. He roared in agony and began to float towards the human. The human raised a blue and gold shield engraved with a lion's head and Aetheron's fist connected with it, dispersing along the shield like a drop of water hitting a rock, before reforming when he pulled it back. The human spun around and drove a hammer into the back of his knees, but the ascendant's leg simply wafted temporarily before reforming.

Ozone crackled in the air as a ball of lightning hit the space where the human had been just a moment before. A flash of white light arced into the air ascendant, and he buckled, screaming as the holy energy burned his molecules. His robes stopped swirling and became solid, as did his fists. The next blast of light simply bounced off of him, and as the paladin jumped at him, he became immaterial again and he simply sailed through him, hitting the ground and twitching from the electricity he had jumped across. Aetheron didn't turn around, he simply vanished into a gray puff of air and reformed facing the male human gasping for breath.

He raised both his hands and placed them together, lightning flowing across them. He became much more immaterial, almost invisible, phasing into the Skywall to draw on more energy. I could feel the charge on my scales even from this distance. The paladin raised his shield in a desperate hope, but the blast of lightning was so intense that, even weakened like he was, Aetheron's blat sent the shield skittered and fell down the cliff, some of the voltage arcing into the paladin who screamed in agony. Aetheron raised his hands again, and I let a smile creep onto my face. The paladin was over now. There was nothing he could do to dodge this strike. This was his end.

Aetheron's face went from murderous glee to one of pain and shock. In the middle of his chest was a gigantic, gaping, smoking hole. The ascendant screamed and jumped at the paladin, but dissipated into air before he could connect. What happened? How had that happened? I looked at the opposite end of the rock. A small figure was sitting on the rock, a female gnome in robes that looked like the cult's, but had more of a greenish tint. A warlock. I looked at the other end. A swirling, vaguely dragon-shaped ball of green and black flame was going on, tearing a hole through a mountain and continuing on.

Of course.

Aetheron had shifted to the Skywall, increasing his electric charge and making him impossible to hit with weapons, but at the same time making him vulnerable to magical attacks, like the one that had just ripped through him. I angled my wings and tilted, the making a wide turn back.

I looked down at Apexar, still channeling the portal, and that ettin, Blindeye, was a corpse. WHAT? I flew down to him as fast as I could. The ettin's four eyes were three open, one closed, the ones open glassy. The body was still warm, and cuts covered his body in the hundreds, indicating that whoever did this used a small weapon and moved very, very fast. His axe was... missing? Why would anyone take it?

Alarms started to go off in my head and I flew to the nearest cultist I could find, a dwarven female in robes who was currently practicing aim with a lava burst. She missed the target miserably, turning a weapons rack into a pile of molten metal.

"YOU!" The dwarf whirled around fast as thought with lightning crackling between her fingertips, before she sighed and bowed.

"My apologies. What is-"

"Blindeye the ettin is dead and his axe is missing! The body's still warm, send out an alarm!" The dwarf's eyes went wind, and she ran on to find a messenger. I sighed and took back to the air. The battle was going very, _very_ poorly. I caught sight of Apexar just as he collapsed into a pile of cobalt, the same paladin and warlock working together.

A blood elven priestess and troll male hunter were battling an unusually weak-looking Edemantus. The priestess was struggling to keep a spherical barrier around her against an enormous egg of water from the lake collapsing on her while the hunter shot the psuedo-elemental with arrow after arrow after poisonous arrow, jumping from the stray bolt of water or two. I flew down to the chains holding the bodies of several red dragons and one live one. Lirastrasza.

I sat down next to the sleeping red and sighed. Some say that anything asleep looks innocent and sometimes cute, and unfortunately, Lirastrasza was no exception. I had wanted to kill her with my flames before whoever took Blindeye's axe could free her, but I couldn't now. It just looked so... wrong. In a few seconds I'd be kicking myself as a whirlwind of knives and daggers exploded from my left.

I jumped back as a female night elf exploded from behind a metal post. I couldn't make out any details about her, she was spinning around amazingly fast, knives showering everything within two yards of her in a deadly hail. Once she stopped, she looked at me and vanished. I was about to ignite the area where she had vanished when I felt a weight on my back. How the hell? I twisted my body and tried to get on my back and crush her, but she was too fast and jumped straight up_ fifteen feet_, two very wicked, curved daggers in her hands as she fell, seemingly in slow motion, towards me.

I took my tail and swatted her out of the way, and she fell to the ground in a roll, absorbing the impact. I got up and we circled each other. I swear she was smiling. She jumped back up and landed on my head and slid down my back, her knife dragging along my scar. I screeched in pain and jumped up, flying, hoping to drop her from high up...

But she was on the ground. She took an axe from her back, glowing a faint purple. My breath stopped. Blindeye's axe. She stepped towards Lirasztrasza's chains and raised the axe, before bringing it down on the master chain. A whirling of gears and pulleys exploded, the noise waking up the red wyrm a moment before she was freed.

Meep.

Lirasztrasza stood up and looked at the elf.

"I am eternally grateful to you, Sha'la." She took off into the air and began hovering, the beating of her wings spraying dust off the ground with each flap."I'll take care of the drakes. You worry about the rest of the twilight rubbish" OH TITANS RUN! FLY WHATEVER JUST GET THE HELL AWAY! I took off for the patrol as fast as I could, straining my wings to go faster, faster! Come on not fast enough, faster! I found Verthelion and screamed at him.

"VERTHELION!" He looked at me.

"What?"

"Problem! Problem, Liraszstrasza's been freed! We need to-" _Woosh!_ A fireball sailed past me and crashed into- Fuluthlion. My breath caught in my throat. No...

Hell broke out. Everyone started to make a beeline for wherever. There was no order. _Woosh_. Sadislion fell to the ground lifeless. _Woosh_. I saw Asteriona try to bank away from the fireball, but it just _followed _her. Magical. Lirasztrasza was making her fireballs freaking magical. I looked back at her. That's when my heart skipped a beat. She opened her mouth and another ball started to fly at... at me. I let gravity take me, and dropped to the ground. I vaguely heard Verthelion screaming my name. I tucked my wings in, willing myself to go faster, faster, faster! I angled up next to the ground, flapping my wings as fast as I could possibly coordinate them, not caring about how dreadfully tired they were. I hazarded a glance back. The fireball was still following me. I turned right. It turned right. I turned left and down, it followed suit, and it kept gaining on me. I flew almost straight up, and let gravity take me as I flew straight down to the wetlands. There were lots of trees there. I could make the fireball hit one of those instead.

I felt a heat spreading along my body as the fireball inched closer and closer, the magic keeping the blast from dispersing, holding it together like a net holds fish. I was almost at the trees. I could-

_Fwoom!_

The fireball got just a little bit closer and launched itself at me, crashing into my right wing. I felt a terrible force explode from me, and I screamed in pain. Fires flickered along the webbing, burning a hole the size of my head. I lost all my balance in the air. My muscles went slack. I fell to the ground in a heap.

I didn't pass out. I wanted to. The water of the wetlands put out the fire, but it still hurt so much.

I was completely helpless.

* * *

><p><strong>The next update will take a little longer as I will also be writing a one-shot.<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.  
><strong>


	5. Chapter 5:Hopeless

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>Welcome to the last few days of my life! That sounded better in my head, but who cares? I'm going to die!<p>

I laid on the soggy mire of the wetlands, taking in my surroundings. The dieing sunlight filtered in through the tree tops which seemed to form a ceiling. Was the sunlight dieing? Or was it just the clouds of heavy mist that hung about the area all the time? I don't know. The trees seemed to make almost a curtain around me, except for a few that I smashed through on my, well, can't exactly call it a _landing, _that I faced. No, not landing. Crash is more like it. Speaking of which...

OH THE PAIN MAKE IT STOP!

My body is on it's side, my right wing folded under me in a way that it is _not_ supposed to bend, with a giant hole literally burned into it. The cut the kaldorie had cut along my scar stung horribly, and my tendons seem to be severed in several places, judging by the screaming agony burning through my muscles that I can not move.

Can not move. I'm crippled. I can't fight. If anything should challenge me I'd die.

Die.

Die.

This thought unnerves me. I don't _want_ to die particularly. Sure, I've seen lots of death, my brothers and sisters, quite a few at my own claws, countless reds, mortals. But it's never had, never had this impact on me. Because this time I'm the one who's going to die. I had so much laid out for me. Verthelion, the war, my friends in patrol A, vengeance on my brood-mother for abandoning me, but now it was all... gone. Did all the ones I killed have the same future, a mate, friends, a wrong they had to right? For the first time in my life I feel a twinge of sympathy to the reds and mortals that died by my claws. My mind went back to the red whelp caught in a bear trap last month

The whelp had so much_ fear_ in it's, no, _his_ eyes, he was begging me not to kill him. And I just laughed at his misfortune. Not only that, I killed him in a painful way, when I could just as easily have snapped his neck and been done with it. I wanted it-him, to suffer. I was fearful now. Would my killer delight in killing me like that? I pictured an orc, face distorted into a nightmare by my imagination, cutting me with a knife and pouring in poison and leaving me to suffer it's effects, or a human thrusting in a sword _slowly _and _slowly_ into my heart, twisting as he went, laughing.

Would, would I even _have_ a killer, or would I just starve and thirst to death here? Ok, thirst, not really a hazard in the wetlands, but I'd starve before my tendons would mend. That thought sent shivers down my back, me with my ribs showing through my sides, my legs thin as twigs-

I shook the thought from my mind. There were too many mortals trying to repair the flooding in the Wetlands for me to not meet one, and that would be it. Even if they did not kill me themselves, they would bring back others. I'd seen what happened to my kind once the non-cultists got a hold of them. Nothing short of death.

Death.

Death.

There was that thought again. I was going to die. The thought kept hitting me over and over again like a pile of rocks, and each time I felt like the fullness of the situation that I was going to die hadn't yet dawned on me. I tried to move my head, but the stiffness of my body didn't permit even _that_. Oh hells, I'd die of the boredom of not being able to move long before starvation or being slain.

Slain.

Slain.

Shut up.

I felt my eyelids closing. I forced them open. I only had a few days left of life. I was going to take it all in. Go out strong. But, what good would that do? Who _cared_ if I went out strong? Nobody would know, even if they cared. I was too well hidden in the marsh to be found by my friends, already the swamp grass was covering my scent, and in no time I'd be untrackable save through accident, and I didn't bother getting my hopes up that they would find me by pure luck. Why should I remain conscious as long as I can? To feel more fear before meeting my end? Hells no. I let my eyelids shut. If only I knew my dreams would be worse than staying awake.

* * *

><p>I dreamed of every single living thing I'd ever killed, <em>ever, <em>save for my prey, which I had to kill to survive. My brothers and sisters. They each went through the same thing. I slashed my sisters throat open. How much had that hurt? I felt it. I wanted to scream in pain, but my voice wouldn't work. Hundreds of reds, hundreds of mortals. Wives, mates, husbands, friends. I ended more friendships and bonds than I could count and I felt not only the pain of me killing them, but the fear.

The emotions that whirled through them, the sorrow of their friends and family as they realized they would never see them ever again. I wanted to cry out for my dream to stop it! That I'd learned my lesson. I was one of them. What was the point in making me relive-

My dream shifted into a twilight drake's body, flying seemingly random circles around the bastion. Somebody flew up to me and screamed the drake's name.

"VERTHELION!" It was _me._ And the body I was in, oh. A giant red wyrm was rising up behind dream-me, not Verthelion's body, the dream me that just screamed. When Verthelion spoke, my mouth felt like it was moving.

"What?" My dream-self had a crazed look in her eyes, the look of someone who'd just seen death itself.

"Problem! Problem, Lirastrasza's been freed! We need to-" A fireball flew past my dream-self and I heard the roar of somebody dieing. Two more fireballs and Verthelion was flying every which way, my mind following him. The next fireball left Lirastrasza's mouth, and flew at my dream-self. I'd never seen how I flew from somebody else's perspective, naturally, and I was awe-struck by how I flew. Looping over and over in the air like I was making knots with a thread, diving and soaring as easily as I breathed, but my dream-self moved over the mountains and dove down still pursued by the fireball.

"SELRIONA!" Verthelion followed my path up, and what I saw shook me to my core. The fireball impacting me, all my body going limp and smashing through the brush with sickening cracks. I felt his heart break. "Selriona... no..." He flopped me down on the mountain and curled his wings around him. He started to shake and make a weird breathing noise. I felt something flow down his face-scales. My heart wrenched at what was happening.

He thought I was dead (And I very soon would be) and was crying over me. No twilight drake ever cried unless something truly terrible, gut-wrenching happened. He cared that much for me? No, no get me out of this dream! I don't want to see it! GET ME OUT! I wrench Verthelion's body into my control and roar at the sky and wake up.

* * *

><p>I woke up during the night, exhausted, and relaxed my nerves. I would say I relaxed my muscles, but without tendons, there wasn't much change in that aspect. Then the dream's memory hit me like, well, the wall of trees I crashed into to get here. I had brought so much pain and sorrow to individuals. The mortals suddenly weren't 'the mortals', the drakes and whelps not just 'the reds'. They were people. They had lives planned out, feelings, people they cared about, who cared about them, just like I do. Soon it would be just like I DID.<p>

Then I thought of Verthelion, how he was tearing himself up over my 'death', which honestly, wasn't that far off from the truth. There it was again, that 'hit by a pile of rocks' feeling as a fraction of the realization that I was going to bloody _die_ set in. Then I thought of what would happen if the roles were reversed. Would I cry over Verthelion's death? I thought about it for a good long while before coming to the startling- or was it natural?- conclusion.

Yes.

I would cry if he died. I cared about him. We were destined mates. We were friends. His conversation was already beginning to lack on me, feeling like a weight on my stomach. I couldn't imagine life without him, and I couldn't imagine the feelings he was going through. Even the dream had hinted that he was going through something that can only be felt first-hand. I felt a silent tear drip into the water below me. I had done that to him. If I hadn't hesitated with killing Lirastrasza-

Killing Lirastrasza.

Oh titans I was so close to doing that! How many did she have that cared for her? Did she have her own broods? And what of the other dragons next to her? What about them, who was grieving for them? I felt sick to my stomach. What, what has this war _done? _Summoning my will I lift my head up and regurgitate the small amount of fluid in my stomach onto the hill next to me, rolling down away from my body. It's then I realize how little I have in my stomach, how little food. I shiver in hunger. Even if starvation didn't take me, I would be suffering.

Why do I care?

After all I've done, this is what I had coming to me.

I deserve this pain, this fear, this sadness, this death.

I deserve to die.

With that thought I go even limper than before. I didn't care about anything anymore. I just didn't. The pain around my body slowly ebbing away, the despair for what I'd done. I didn't care about any of it. My mind went blank.

When my mind re-activated of it's own accord, it was night. I'd never truly feared the night, not when I can just take off into the air, and on the ground nothing in it's right mind would attack me. But now, when I'm helpless, unable to defend myself, every shadow, every drop of rain, every howl of wind is a predator coming to kill me. No matter how much I tell myself that I deserve to die I can't quite bring myself to _want_ to die. After all, it's just natural to want to continue living. But what do I have to live _for?_ My stomach growled, and I growled back at it.

Verthelion, for one. What would he do now that he thought I was dead, no matter how much I may as well be. I don't want to put him through that. And all the families I'd broken, the friendships I destroyed, they at least deserve an apology. But, I can't do anything. I am doomed. Wishing to be able to do the things I won't be able to isn't going to make my death any easier. I sighed.

"If there's anyone out there going to kill me, hurry up and DO IT!" I take a deep breath and roar as loud as I can, hoping to attract predators or mortals to finish me off. I wait a few hours. Nothing.

My thoughts were a jumbled mess. I'd be thinking, then I'd suddenly pass into unconsciousness and continue where I left off. How could I possibly get out of -unconscious- here? Oh wow I'm much more hungry than I just was, what happened? Oh, I passed out didn't I? Well, ok, how do I get out? I can't use my muscles, so what can -unconsciousness- I use? Oh look, even hungrier. And it's raining. I am thirsty, so I'll let it fall into my mouth. Ah, that's better. Now, where -unconsciousness- was I? I can't use my muscles, so I can use... my voice? What good would that do? Face it, you. Are. Going. -unconsciousness- To. Die.

Die.

Die.

I shivered in spite of myself, but only a small part of my body actually moved. Another drip into the water below me, but not the rain. I moaned. I was getting really hungry now. How long has it been? I don't know. My stomach is growling nonstop. I need to eat something. A snake is crawling right infront of me. My stomach practically lurches out to grab it, and I snap my mouth out and grab it, killing it instantly and gulping it down. The taste is terrible, but I can't be picky. If I can sustain myself on these small things until I mend, I can live. I feel the snake enter my crop, and I then push it into my stomach.

I can live. I might make it out of this. I can, I can, oh who am I kidding? There's no way a snake every how many days can keep me alive long enough. Just no way. I'm just prolonging the inevitable. I take a deep breath of air and remember the times I was in my egg, before I was abandoned. I replayed the events of that terrible day in my mind.

"No, no! Not mine, please!" My brood-mother had said that. The noises, _hssssss_, _diiing, haaaup, _I know those now. She was breathing fire on attackers, swords were clanging with something, arrows were flying. My crop clenched in terrible realization. She truly _didn't _abandon me. I was taken from her, while the cult distracted her. However powerful she may have been, she couldn't have been everywhere, could she? I just wish I could see her one last time, tell her I'm sorry.

I feel more tears drop into the ground below. All this time, I thought that she had intentionally left me, that she wanted me to suffer with the faceless. The voice in my egg told me that if she had been looking for me she'd have found me, but I'd seen how _big_ the world is. And with how well defended the bastion is, even if she knew where I was she'd never have gotten there. All this time I vowed to have revenge on her for leaving me before I even hatched, but now, I feel terrible for even having thought that she abandoned me.

"I, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I don't know who I said that to, I just needed to say it. I took a deep breath and swallowed the lump forming in my throat, and lowered my voice. "I don't want to die." So many people were going to die in this war, no matter the outcome. Why? What was the underlying reason? The voice told me all sorts of things about the reds but it lied about my brood-mother. Could it have lied about all those? Could those visions have been made up? Were, were the reds the evil ones? Or was it us? Was I... evil? I thought long and hard about all the lives I'd taken. It was war, yes, but I could have, not killed them.

I was evil.

Somehow this realization was the worst of them all. I had done evil things, I was evil. I really _did_ deserve to die. But I didn't want to. Now that I knew it, I wanted nothing more than to make things right.

But I can't. I'm going to die here. There's nothing me or anyone else can do to save me. The mortals are going to find me, or I'm going to starve, and then I'll die, just after making a devotion to righting the wrongs I made. Was that, was that even possible, to fix what I'd done? I'd done _so much._ I'd have to die hundreds of times to make it right. This death is as much atonement as I can ever make. My wing was still killing me. Ha, no pun intended. I sighed, and closed my eyes.

* * *

><p>My second dream since being given a death-sentence on the floors of the wetlands, went a little something like this. I was still lying, unable to move, but I was on a smooth, flat ground, extending around me in all directions, colored sunset red. My field of vision zoomed out from my body so that I could see who was standing around me. Over to my right was a huge red dragon, my brood-mother. To my left was Verthelion, both of them sitting. Behind me was Valiona, and in front of me was Lirastrasza. I shuddered. What was going to happen to me? Raw terror seized my heart. My brood-mother's scales were charred and covered in ashes. Valiona's face kept shimmering, so I could never tell exactly where her eyes, nostrils, and fangs were. Verthelion didn't look at me directly, not in the eye. It was like he was ashamed of me! Lirastrasza was glaring at me, just her eyes making me feel a little like I was burning. She was the first to speak.<p>

"You nearly killed me. You were going to kill me. You want to kill me" I tried to scream at her that I was sorry, but my voice didn't work, my body was utterly paralyzed. My brood-mother shook her head.

"You thought I abandoned you. You honestly thought that? Why would I leave you? What kind of person do you think I am?" Valiona screeched behind me.

"You are a failure, Selriona! You could've hidden behind a building on the rise, but no, you thought you had to go to the wetlands! NOW LOOK WHERE YOU ARE!" Verthelion sighed sorrowfully at me.

"You abandoned me." No! NO! I DIDN'T MEAN TO! My brood-mother picked up on my thoughts and bitterly replied,

"Neither did I." Verthelion continued.

"You left me alone. We were best friends, destined mates, _best friends_, and you abandoned me, left me alone. You broke me. You broke all of us" All four of them took a step closer, and I flinched in my mind. All four of them spoke at once.

"For doing all this, we sentence you to." They all took a deep breath. "DEATH!" Four bouts of flame sprayed onto me at once, an inch from hitting me-

* * *

><p>I woke up with a start, gasping for breath. For a moment I didn't remember my situation, but then it dawned on me. It wasn't real. It was just a nightmare. It wasn't real. But how much of it wasn't? Everything they said was true. I really had wanted to kill Lirastrasza. I honestly thought my brood-mother left me, I could've hidden behind a cult building, and in a way, I did abandon Verthelion. I did break him. Another tear dripped into the cold, wet marsh below me, and I sighed in my throat.<p>

I just wished that whatever or whoever was going to kill me would just hurry up with it. I was bored out of my mind here. But really, I deserved to suffer. I deserved anything I got. This is the closest I'll ever get to making things right, and now, that's all that I cared about. I tried to imagine who my killer would be. I looked around. I took a deep breath through my nostrils, and smelled the air. There seemed to be a fair bit of water outside my cage of trees, a lake probably. Given where the twilight rise is compared to the wetlands, I'd say I was maybe a half-kilometer from the lake formed at the base of the destroyed dam ruins. Well, I didn't know much about the region, but I knew a few things.

The lake was filled with threshadons that had been displaced, those weren't exactly going to kill me, however fearsome they were in the water. A few elementals formed by the flood roamed around the lake, but they don't usually stray far, being attracted to the lake. However if they did come to me for whatever reason, they would kill me, seeing Neptulon's opposition of Deathwing. The final possibility, save for traveling adventurers, were dwarfs at this Chiselslab, sorry, Slabchisel fellow's survey. So that was it, my killer would be most likely a dwarven archeologist who doesn't know the sharp end of, well, anything, from the blunt end. I pictured a pickaxe coming down, carving into my stomach, the phantom pain still haunting me even now. I shuddered. Killed by a pickaxe. Oh the humilation.

Out of pure reflex flames started to boil in my crop, and I screamed in rage, letting all my flames spray out into the open space infront of me, burning anything it touched, sterilizing the earth. Several pieces of foliage caught fire, but the humidity and perpetual rain of the marsh kept it from spreading. I breathed more flames out, everything I had, not like I'd need them once I'm dead. It felt good to burn those leaves, to make sure nothing would ever grow again on that spot. I didn't realize how terribly exhausted I was after that, starving as I was, and I blanked out again.

I woke up to the noise of boots getting sucked by mud as they lifted up, and my mind did a double take. The noise was... getting closer? I sighed. Those flames I let out probably attracted the attention. I couldn't smell who it was, the scent of the marsh was covering everything. This was it. I was going to die now. Life must love to have fun with me, deciding to kill me only once I decided I wanted to make things right. But it didn't matter anymore what I did, what I wanted, soon I would only be a body. Maybe someday a couple whelps would look down on my remains and learn why you do _not_ get attacked by a red dragon. That was small comfort. I wondered which of my projections would be right? It couldn't be an elemental, those didn't have boots. Either it was an archeologist or an adventurer. It didn't matter. I would die just the same. I sighed. No matter how much you tell yourself you're ready to die, you never really are.

My death stepped out from behind the curtain of trees.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Huh, that got finished much sooner than I thought it would be.  
><strong>


	6. Chapter 6:Mortal

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**If you haven't already noticed, I daily update my profile under my IN WRITING section how far I am into the next chapter. If you're wondering how far I am into the next chapter just check that.**

* * *

><p>My death immediately pulled out of my cage of trees and pressed itself up against the outside, breathing heavily. I heard the voices, belonging to a young female, maybe just into adulthood, maybe not even there. She took a deep breath.<p>

"Ok, ok. It's alright. It's just a twilight drake, one of the bloodthirstiest creatures on all of Azeroth. No problem, no problem." Bloodthirstiest? Was that how my kind were viewed? If it wasn't already resting on the ground, my head would've sank down. "You can do this. You just have to get the herb, hopefully not get incinerated, and run." Another deep breath, and my death poked her head back around.

It seems I was off by a long shot.

A young (Though young is hard to tell with them) night elf stuck her face around the woods. Judging by the small flaps of robes that stuck in, she belonged to the Ceniraon whatever. She had a little brown bag in her right hand. She had black markings along each eye in some shape, likely a form of animal, but her chin had a jagged scar that looked like a lightning bolt streaking across it. Her eyes were a bitter, acidic yellow, not fitting well with her terrified expression. Scared? Of what? I don't have any fires left. Even if I did want to incinerate her, without food, my body couldn't replace the flames I spewed out earlier. And if by some miracle I did, I'd still die, but slower and more painfully, of starvation.

She pulled her head back before I could get beyond her purple hair, and took more deep breaths.

"Ok, I have to do this. This is, some, sort of test, yes, that's what it is. I can do this." Another deep breath. So this was it. I was going to die now. NOW the full realization that I was going to die dawned on me. I'd never be able to fly again. I'd never taste anything ever again, never drink water, never be with my friends, never become a dragon, never do anything ever again. I would just be a floating, disembodied spirit in the nether, barely conscious if at all, for all eternity. My heart seemed to wrench and twist in my body. I was going to die. I kept this mantra in my head.

I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

The young druid-in-training ran into my cage of trees, jumped at some vague plant growing behind my tail, yanked it out of the earth, and ran out as fast as she could go. I just laid there in stunned silence. What. THAT was what was supposed to kill me? Aaah, the bronze have a sense of humor! So I was doomed to starve here after all? I deserve that, I know, but it doesn't make it any better to know! I felt a tear drip into the marsh, brought on by the raw terror I had just felt.

She must've been ten yards away when I heard a splash of mud indicating a sudden, sliding stop.

"Wait a second." I heard sloshing as the elf came back and looked inside at me, shaking slightly, but noticeably, in fear. "It, didn't even move." SHE! SHE! She started nervously approaching me, locking her eyes with mine. Now that she was all the way in I could observe her clothing as well. She wore robes that started at her neck and fell almost to the ground, and long sleeves that left only her forearms open. The robes were green, with brown stripes patterned over it like tree roots over grass, and it didn't bend with her movements as easily as the cultist robes did. On her left, was a knife strapped to her waist, and on her right was a heavy book with a brown leather binding. The knife was about as long as one of my claws and bent the way a bird's talon would be, with a wooden handle grip. Both knife and book were bound to her robes with some weird black substance, black hooks on the item and black loops on the robes, so it almost stuck together. I almost felt like I was burning up in those acidic yellow irises. "You can't move." I groaned.

"No, I can't, so just hurry up and kill me." She looked at me with a confused expression. What, was she so unable to comprehend that?

"I don't understand what you said. Can you speak Common?" Oh. I spoke Draconic didn't I? Great, now my brain's starting to blur languages.

"No, I can't move, so just hurry up and kill me." She jumped back when I started speaking.

"W-what?" I sighed.

"I know you're going to kill me. If not, then you'll just," I sighed. "bring others back. Even if you don't my tendons are broken, I can't move, I'll starve." I closed my eyes. I heard the elf starting to walk away slowly. She stopped moving, and sighed.

"Damn that gnome and her sympathy accelerators." She started to walk over to me. I heard the knife coming off the robe's black loops with a _kkrrshhrkk_. I flinched what few muscles I could. She laid the knife sideways on me, and put her hands on either side of the blade. So this was it. I relaxed everything I could. If I tightened, it would be even more painful. This was it. I may be the only twilight who knows that the voice was lying, and now I was going to die. I was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to be scared. I was the strongest of my brood.

But I still wasn't strong enough.

I gasped when a wave of warmth rolled through my body, extending from the knife's point. The warmth spread through my body, head to tail. So this is what dieing felt like? Huh, not so bad. I felt some things all along my body snap, sending shudders up and down my body. Hold on, I can move? How can I move? My tendons are mostly broken. I open my eyes and I can not comprehend what I'm seeing.

That druid is moving her hands in slow circles over my side, a soothing green light flowing out of them. I feel my tendons mending together, the hole in my wings shrinking to a scar. What? How? She's... saving my life? Why? I, I haven't given her any reason to do so!

"W, why?" She sighed.

"I'm testing a gnome's experiments. This Gvelcro is nice to hold my stuff, but she insisted, absolutley ordered me to take a sympathy accelerator. Can you believe it?" Alright, now that was just too convenient for my liking.

"What was the gnome's name?" The druid looked lost for a while, then chuckled, stopping the flow of healing energy.

"Here I am, beginner druid, hardly able to shift into a feline, having a conversation with a twilight drake about gnomes. Oh right, her name. She had the weirdest first name. No last name though. She called herself some absurd name like 'Chromie'." I slowly get up on my feet, shaking under the lack of food. How long have I _been_ here? The druid takes several steps back when I stand up, looking much paler than before, sweat beading on her face. How hard was it to heal me?

She fumbles with something in her bag, and pulls out a vial filled with a red, slushy fluid, and offers it to me, opening it. I take the vial into my mouth, careful not to shatter it, and tilt my head up, the fluid flowing down my throat. Ugh, the taste! So bitter! But, taste means there are some calories, so I can't be picky.

I breathe out. My breath seems fresh over my tongue, like I'd swallowed a couple dozen mint leaves. I don't know if it's the druid's magic or the drink she'd given me. My front legs buckle, under a combination of starvation and... atrophy? I've been here for so long I have atrophy? The druid runs over to my other side and takes my dislocated wing in her hands.

_CRACK!_ I roar in pain, and I look at the druid, shaking, backing up. I want to ask her why she saved my life, but I'm not going to push my chances. The world's coming back to me. I can live. I'm _going_ to live. I can leave the wetlands, leave this perpetual rain, I can _eat!_ I take a step forward, to leave and go hunt, well, SOMETHING. The adolescent-like me- takes my step the wrong way.

"No, no please, I just saved your life!" She backs up so fast she trips over herself and lands in the mud, looking up at me in terror. I just smile down at her.

"I know. Thank you, I can't say that enough. I can make things right now. I have to." I turn around from her and slowly,_ slowly_, as to not over-exert myself, walk off to find something to hunt. As I'm walking away, I can hear the druid's screams.

"WHY DID I JUST DO THAT? GAH! I'M GOING TO KILL THAT GNOME!" I chuckled, and my stomach lurches at a smell. Food. I pick up my pace. Food! I jump from the brush and land on a crocolisk. I bite down on it's neck with as much force as I have left, killing it. I waste no time and begin to devour it. In minutes there's nothing left but bones. I look onwards into the woods, and run my tongue over my fangs.

Let the hunt begin.

A few hours later, I am sitting down, licking the blood off my jaws. That was the most I'd ever eaten at one time. I feel so full. I had stuffed my stomach to the brim with food, aswell as my crop, which I would later empty into my stomach. Till then I'd better be careful not to use any fire. I can't believe it. I'm alive. I made it out of that ordeal _alive_. I can not believe it! How, how, what happened? The druid saved me! Why? She said something about a gnome and, sympathy accelerators? That name though, Chromie, I felt like I heard it before. Like it was just on the tip of my tongue but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But still.

A gnome's crazy emotion experiment saved my life! Ha, this world we live in.

How did my mood improve so much? Oh yes, I'd just been starving, and now I'm full. And _alive. _I laugh again, walking over to a small pond and submerging myself, washing off a lot of the mud. I broke back out. I'm also slightly hysterical.

Okay, now what do I do? I'm _alive! _My first thought is to go back to Verthelion, let him know that I'm alive and-

What if he's dead?

My breath catches in my throat. Lirastrasza was too powerful, too rested, too _angry_ for us to subdue. Verthelion's probably dead. I keep telling myself that he may not be, but I can't escape that terrifying realization that he is probably dead. No, I can't go look. If he's really dead, I, I want to stay ignorant. I don't want to know. But, I owe him. But he thinks I'm dead, if he's still alive.. How many days has it been? Has it even been weeks? Verthelion would ask to be transferred somewhere else to get away from where I 'died', but he wouldn't stay sad over me, he'd think that I wouldn't want him to (And he'd be right). He'd have moved on. That's what I'd do in his place.

The thought sends cold chills through my body, despite the humid warmth of the wetlands, and I shake it off. My records would be stricken from the cult. I am essentially dead to them.

This catches me in the chest like one of Valiona's meteorites. Maybe I am alive, but my old life is over.

I have to start over now. From the beginning. What are my options? I could, I could go back to the cult, find someplace they don't know me yet... and what? I'd be stuck in the war again, killing with virtually no choice, unable to right all my wrongs. I growl at the air. No. I'd make things right. But how? I could try to find my brood-mother for one. Tell her, tell her I'm sorry. That I'm still alive. If she's still-

NO! SHUT UP! Stop thinking like that. Stop thinking like that. Just, just assume she's alive. Just assume everyone's alive. Alright, but I have no chance of finding her. I could possibly go ask in... Wyrmrest, maybe under a flag of truce, but I don't even know her _name_. Sure, maybe Alexstrasza could perform some weird life-connectivity thing on me, but, I don't know. Hold on. Alexstrasza. Didn't the voices say they want me to get next to her so they could burn her with my flames? Oh no. No. Wyrmrest is out of the picture. Don't want to burn the dragon queen, even accidentally. What other options do I have?

I hear a male's voice around me. It wasn't like a voice in my head, but more like whoever was talking to me was invisible and talking to me from all angles. I think I saw some shimmers, but they were gray, and only barely definable as a dragon, but I had no idea what flight or what rank. This voice was not like the evil voice that spoke to me in my egg, but a different kind, slow, patient, and echoing, like it was talking from the depths of a cave.

"_Go to Stormwind. Pretend to be a human."_

"WHAT? Why would I do that?"

"_It will lead to a chain of events that will make things right." _

"And I should trust you because?"

"_Because if I had wished you dead, your egg would never even have been laid."_ "

I don't believe you."

"_Well you have to. It is for the best. Do it, and you'll see your friends again, you'll see the war halted, you'll see Verthelion again."_ My heart thumped. I did want that. But what if this voice was lying?

"Well..."

"_Do you have any other places to be going?"_ Damn it I wish it hadn't said something logical like that. "

Alright alright, fine I'll go to Stormwind and pretend to be a wretched mortal. If it'll get you to shut up."

"_Oh it will. Believe me, it will."_ That sounded ominous. I'd have to be careful. The shimmering form faded. I look at the broken hills in the distance to the south, where a tidal wave had broken through on the dam's shattering. The ground around it had been completely shook up. I test my wing. It feels... really good. Whatever was in that vial the druid gave me it was really good. My wing shouldn't be feeling this good. I flex it, and crouch down. Ok then. Let's go. No sense staying here any longer than I have to. I look up at the dim sun, peeking through the cloud cover, and jump into the air, the warm thermals from the bog keeping me up.

In a few hours I made it to the dam, as the purple-shell was getting dark. I grin. Purple-shell. I never grew out of that. I can't help but wonder how much sheer destruction the tidal wave caused. I heard the splashing of water all the way from the Bastion, but I didn't look at it; I was still a whelp, still in my circle-ground. That dam was completely annihilated. Chunks of rock the size of me, most much bigger, were strewn about like leaves off a tree. Small rivulets flowed in between the cracks in the rocks, spilling over each other and forming a small river down. The empty lake bed behind it stretched for miles, filled with all manner of creatures I couldn't make out from these distances. I set down at the base of the rubble for the night. I looked for a pseudo-cave I could use. One of the rubble piles had a chunk of rubble the size of Valiona in roughly a crescent shape, over another, and a virtual tunnel of boulders behind them. I peeked my head in. Good enough.

I jumped over the boulders and into it. The water streams made the stones slick, and I got a few scrapes on my stomach. My wings were too tired for me to fly. I needed to rest them. I found a slab of rock that was almost level, and mostly dry, and laid down on it. I closed my eyes, and in seconds, I was flinching from sunlight.

I groaned.

"Go away, leave me-" I remembered where I was, and the situation I was in. "Oh yeah, Stormwind" The name had always been used in spite by the cultists. One of the various insults they had was 'Go to Stormwind!'. I groaned again, and got up, looking out my makeshift cave of rubble. My wings were sore from flying so much yesterday after a long time of not moving a centimeter, but a little exercise would do them good. I flaped them a few times, getting blood to flow along them after the night of not moving.

I jumped down, briefly falling almost straight down before I spread out my wings and glide up. I start flying, and circle around to the top of the dam. Damn. This thing really got _wrecked_ didn't it? Once I got to the top, I looked out on the landscape. A mile of wet lake-soil was sprawled out before me, crawling with all sorts of disgusting fish-men that I am very sure taste nothing like fish, gigantic wasps, a few crocolisks and, and, BOARS! I licked my tongue over my fangs and got to work. However big that meal was yesterday, it wasn't enough to fix my starvation. That would take some work to correct. I licked boar meat out from between my teeth. Never tasted boar before, it is amazing. Salty, and it tastes like stag, only it's fresher. I inhaled the scent. This was the best stuff I had ever tasted. Food on the highlands consisted mainly of stag and the occasional mountain ram. Boar was just, just, heavenly.

After eating my fill, I decided to make some sort of plan to actually get to Stormwind rather than just fly all the way over there, which I am not too keen on doing. Okay. I've heard some of the dwarves speaking about a tram system between there and their city. The dwarven city was supposed to be not far away, maybe a day or two from here by flight. The snowy weather would wreak absolute havoc on me, however. How was it possible that Dun Morogh is covered in _snow? _It's practically on the equator! There are probably parts of Northrend that are warmer. Okay, so I can go to Dun Morogh and use the tram to get to Ironforge. If the tram really is as fast as I overheard, I could cut down the otherwise four day flight to three. Which isn't a lot, but it would be welcome.

The sun beat down on me, and a few insects swarmed around me. Hmm. Crop empty? Good. Let's see if it works. I brought flames into my crop, and smiled.

"Oh good, that's working." I took in a deep breath and rotated my head, scorching several mosquitoes beating uselessly at my scales. Ah, that feels good. Alright then. Let's get moving. I took off into the air, keeping an eye out for the small cultist camp one on of the pieces of land that used to be an island. Something big and blue swam in a diminished pool of water, and the cultist that saw looked up to me as I passed and bowed. I looked on. Something smacked my nose horn, and I snarled. It was a talon.

A bird, condor I think it was, squawked and turned tail. Smart bird.

I continued on. I marveled at the sight below me, In a few hours I felt my stomach rumble and I descended for a meal and to rest. I caught sight of what looked like a camp below. Some wooden spikes made a perimeter, there was a small hut, like the kind the cult made, but much less organized, colored like human skin, and looking just like it was thrown together. This was all on the side of a mountain, and there seemed to be a cave in the side, within the camp borders. It was the things that were in the camp that disgusted me.

These, things, were wearing some red clothing over their bodies with green pants, with gloves on their clawed hands clutching pickaxes like their lives depended on it and had long, furry tails. Their skin was pink, and their eyes seemed to be either permanently closed or squinting really, really hard. They were hunched over terribly by a weight on their backs, a skin-colored pack that had lumps outside of it. Their ugly, wrinkled, almost bald heads, were surrounded by whiskers along their sides, and had a melted green candle square on their 'forehead'. The smell was absolutely nightmarish, like rancid meat, rotting apples, and rock dust, all swirled together by sweat and smoke.

Of course, I stumbled on a camp of titan damned kobolds.

A few rams and sheep roamed outside the camp boarders where more of the wretched things were patrolling. Alright, THAT is disgusting. I stop flapping and open my wings out, gliding to the ground. The kobolds, upon seeing me, immediately broke into a panic, stumbling over each other, biting, and just escaping into the cave. One of them, running in, lost the candle from it's head, and simply went berserk, thrashing everything blindly, as if the candle gave it the ability to see, before kicking it, and picking it up like it was it's most precious possession. Of course, with these vermin it may have been. It gently placed the candle back on it's head, and ran in.

Now if the smell would just follow them, we'd be all set. Within seconds I was having dry heaves. I quickly charged at a ram, but I got a little bit careless, and got a horn in the face. I recoiled, and jumped up over the ram, landing on it's back, digging my claws into it's back. It made some weird calling noise in pain, and tried to buck me off, but I just crushed it under my weight. The smell! Ugh!

I ate as much as I hazarded I could without vomiting from the lingering kobold-smell, but I was still very hungry from my near-death experience, so I skeletonized it within the hour. I looked at a nearby sheep, and figured, what the heck? I clawed it's neck, making it bleed out, before I ate it. Not as good as boar, but it'll do. My wings were still sore, so I walked away from that _awful, wretched_ kobold smell. I risked straining my wings, and flew to the top of the small mountain and looked for a clearing in the trees. The trees were pines, and clustered together as if huddling together for warmth. True, at this proximity to the home of the dwarfs, a cool wind blew down, but the lingering heat of the loch balanced it out. The sun's rays shone through the tree cover, and a robin looked at my sideways from it's nest, sitting on it's eggs.

I looked around. There wasn't exactly much around here, but I'd make due. I found a grassy bed and sat down on it, before laying down on my stomach and placing down my head on the grass. The grass felt nice, tickling between my scales, removing tiny bits of dirt and mud stuck under there if I moved my head slightly. I sighed, inhaling the pine scent of the trees around me. I could almost fall asleep here.

Almost.

I tested my wings after a while, lost in my own thoughts. Still a bit sore, but who cares, the exercise will make it stronger. I took off into the air again and angled myself west. I passed over fields of green grass, bears, forests, sheep, rams, the odd dwarven base or two, getting shot at occasionally. Thank the titans every single bullet missed at those distances. At this rate I'd be in Ironforge maybe by tomorrow at night. I flew upwards, the frigid air rapidly replacing the loch's as I climb up the mountain side. Snow starts to cake the peaks, replacing vegetation. I shivered as the air started to get to my blood. I slowly lost altitude, and smashed right into the snow. I got up, shivering. Damn my cold-blood. I'm going to slow down so much! There's one thing I can do to circumvent the cold-blood though, even if it won't remove the cold problem, but I can worry about that later.

I concentrated on my form. I felt the rush of magic, like a river flowing through my body. I gasped, and some force suspended me on my hind legs. Scales discolored and smoothed out. My body shrunk a large amount, and some of my scales became soft, and suspended themselves on my body. My head spikes split into dozens, hundreds, thousands of tiny filaments and hang down from my head. My tail shrunk into little more than an extra bone, unnoticeable through my clothing. I kept the flow of magic going as my wings shimmered and became a thick indigo fur cape on my back that I wrapped around my body to help keep warm. I sighed. The world looks so big now. This is, of course, the easiest mortal form to assume, and I've never done it before, so I'm naturally going to become this.

I had changed myself into a human.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. I can't tell the quality of my stories, because no matter how goodbad it seems to you, when I'm writing it, to me it always, always sounds like crap. So please review, because I really don't know how good it is actually.**


	7. Chapter 7:Guest

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>I shivered in the cold of Dun Morogh as I wrapped my cloak around me. The world was so... big. I noticed that my fur cloak had a patch roughly the size of my human head where the material was thinner. Black... hair, almost purple, dropped down my back. My 'clothing' was a thick fur leather robe around me, dark purple in it's coloring. I stumbled, losing my balance. Walking on two feet then. Alright, can't be that hard. I've seen the mortals do this all the time. Just move on foot in front of the other and WHOA! I fall forward, landing on my feet. Or, no, I guess I landed on my hands. The coldness of the snow burned my hands, and when I got up, wobbling, I saw that tiny slivers of ice had cut open my hand slightly and imbedded themselves in my body. Great, how will I get them out?<p>

I looked at the slivers of ice, when they suddenly turned to water! Oh right, human body temperature was always very warm. If I were still in my normal form, my body temperature wouldn't be much higher than the snow's, and the ice would be frozen. It was a good idea to change forms after all. But however warm my new body was, it was still brutally cold outside. And that would slowly work it's way in. Nowhere near as fast, but still. I didn't know how long a human dressed in these layers of clothing could stand these temperatures, but I didn't want to find out.

I placed another foot forward, this time I stayed up, but I still swayed violently. I can do this. I put another foot forward, and another. Each time I swayed less. I held my front le- arms out to the sides as I slowly made my way forward. Eventually I didn't even have to do that, and they rested in an oddly comfortable place, swaying by my sides. The vast field of snow stretched before me, an odd path of rounded stones, coated with ice and cemented with snow, wound through it. I shivered in the cold. I needed some way to keep warm. Maybe I could still use my flames? It was a long shot, but worth a try.

I extend my left hand into the open air and open it, the cold seeming to bite at my hideously long fingers. I tried to wonder how I would use flames now. Humans didn't have crops. Right? So how? I focused on my hand, trying to envision the familiar flames licking along it. Suddenly I felt a new sensation on my skin. It was like there was something under my hand pushing out, like my bones were growing, growing. Then there was a woosh, and my hand had the familiar, comforting blue flames rippling along it. I smiled at the warmth it provided. While it didn't do anything to my hand, it did warm the rest of me. But even then, I could feel that just lighting up my hand was draining me. I had to breathe harder and harder to sustain even this small flame before I imagined it stopping, to which it responded by stopping.

In moments the warmth was replaced by cold. I noticed that I had stopped moving as well. I need to move. I slowly walk forward, huddled up in my win- cloak. My cloak. The snow fell lightly. I had never really seen snow before. The snow caught itself in my 'hair', stubbornly refusing to melt. The flakes that fell on my face felt like a little prick, before it melted. I smiled. The wonders of being warm-blooded. I kept trudging along at a slow, agonizing pace, but if I were in my real form I'd have passed out of exhaustion long ago, so I'm not complaining. I shiver. The cold is starting to get to me. My nostrils have a small bit of mucus... _leaking_ out of them. I don't know if that's a side effect of being in a mortal form or just something brought by the cold, or maybe both.

I visualize flames shooting through my nostrils, and it happens, briefly forcing the cold from my body, and clearing out my sinuses so I can take in a deep breath through them and promptly choke on the cold air, which was already coming back into me. It seems each time I warm myself back up it lasts a shorter time. I had to find some kind of shelter fast. I narrowed my eyes through the snow. I could barely see a thing! Had my eyesight become that much worse, or was it the snow that was falling thicker? I didn't know, and I didn't care, all I cared about was that I heard some voices ahead. I briefly lit up my legs, stumbling a little from the exertion, but speeding up as the cold was forced from them.

I caught sight of them; maybe a half dozen figures about three-quarters my height, clinking in armor. I tried to yell to them.

"HEY!" All at once they stopped and started running towards me. Six males, all in shining gray plate armor head to toe. I noticed that the armor was 'shining' because of all the snow that had landed on it and their conducted body heat melted. They were carrying short axes, maybe as long as their arms, in one hand, and a (relatively) large shield in the other, engraved with a golden hammer in the middle. One of them, the one closest to me, held up a hand and the others stopped around me, looking up. These dwarfs were much bigger from this perspective. I shivered in my fur cloak. The one who had held up his hand spoke to me.

"Oy! Water you doing out here in this cold, lass? Come on, let's get you to some place warm. Come on lads, let's give her something ta wear!" The dwarves each reached into some cleverly hidden pockets and pulled out large yellow... carpets that they handed to me. "Here, put these blankets on. Let's get you to, ah, where were you headed?" I let my w-cloak go back to it's normal position, and wrapped the blankets around me. Almost immediately I started to fell warmer, the cold being permanently purged from my body, but I kept shivering out of delayed reaction to the heat.

"I-I-Ironforge" The dwarf nodded.

"Well yer in luck, lass! Our patrol's almost over. Come on, let's get yeh to the city." One of the other dwarves, with a long, long black beard poking out of his helmet, joined the conversation.

"If ya don't mind me asking, what business do yeh have in ol' Ironforge?"

"T-the tram." The guards all gave a murmur of approval.

"Aye, it's too cold here for most humans. What were yeh thinkin', going out into this place with those clothes?" I shook my head.

"No choice." They looked at each other, and decided to stay out of it. Good. I wouldn't want to explain to them why I-

I, me, myself. I need a name to call myself. Selriona will _never _go over well, not a chance. Oh, and speaking of that, the 'leader' of this patrol has a question for me...

"So, what's yer name, lass?"

"Uh, Selria" REALLY? THAT'S the best you could come up with? THAT is pathetic. I mean, honestly! Rrrrgh. Well, I'd better stick with it now. The dwarf gave me a look, and shrugged.

"Meh, I've heard weirder names." I raised my eyes.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. There was this fellow, an elf, down in the swamp, went by Itharius. But ya know, elves have the strangest names. Always drowsy though, that lad. Never could open his eyes fully. Come on, let's get going. Keep quiet, never know what's waiting for ya in the shadows." I nodded, and looked at the sun. It was starting to lower. I guessed we maybe had another five hours of light, already I could see the dark blue outlined with red that signaled Azeroth's shadow creeping up, small tinges of purple jumping across the ice. I shivered as cold continued to bite at my face. The dwarfs walked on through the path, and I marveled at the snow-covered trees, the lakes frozen into giant chunks of ice, the snow covered... boars! My mouth started watering, and I slowed down. The patrol looked back at me. One of them asked.

"Uh, lass? Are yeh all right?"

"Boar..." I flinched towards it when I felt a cold metal hand on my left arm.

"You can get _cooked_ boar at Ironforge. Come on." They lead me away from that boar. Those bastards.

"So, what business do yeh have in Stormwind?"

"I don't know really. There's just, not much elsewhere to go with the war." The dwarf laughed.

"Not much elsewhere ta go? Lady, look at our city! We're practically impenetrable! Or go to that floaty mage city, NOBODY would attack that because nobody goes there anymore! Ha!" I would have raised my eyebrows if I had any. Oh wait, I do now. I raised them.

"Floaty mage city?"

"Yeah, Dala-whatever. Oh look, here's Kharanos. We'd better make a stop here, lass, it's getting late. I trust yeh can make yer way to the city by yourself tomorrow with the blankets?" I didn't know how far away the city was, but the sun was going down alarmingly fast by the time we got into the small town. The town had a couple snow-covered buildings on it made out of a gray stone, low lying (Though probably not for dwarves), with sides that looked like windows barred with thick stones, but the windows were walls. Some of them had dome tops, some didn't, and all were covered in snow. I walked over to a dwarf female in thick fur clothing, hoisting some form of meat being carried in her arms. It smelled suspiciously like boar, but it smelled horribly burned and had a lot more salt on it. I stopped her.

"Um, where can I, uh, stay the night here?" The dwarf smiled.

"Ya can stay at the inn. Right over there" She pointed to the largest of the buildings, with a flight of... stairs going down. Oh dear. Oh titans. Well, let's just get through with it. I walked over to the inn and looked down at the stairs, menacing. I took a deep breath, and held onto the wall, lifting one foot and moving it over the closest step, and slowly lowering it. I eased my weight onto that foot, and smiled. I lifted my other foot, and I instantly fell forward, tumbling over myself. I groaned when I got to the bottom. Damn stairs. A roar of laughter was coming from all around me. At first I growled, thinking it was at me, but as I shakily stood up, I realized that the laughter had been going on for a while.

Several dozen dwarves and gnomes, all of which looked much larger to me than I was used to, were sitting at tables, drinking from large(Again, relatively) mugs, and eating strips of meat that smelled like the burned, salted boar the female outside had. I walked around, looking for some way to sleep. I was hungry, but I could go a night without a meal. I walked up to a dwarf male behind an elevated portion of stone, trying to drawn out the cacophony of noise. I hated having to depend on the kindness of others. To be a guest in another twilight drake's home put you at their mercy. They knew the layout better than you, and they often had more belongings that they could hurt you with. Scraps of metal you could step on but they'd avoid like they had done countless times. But I had no choice. It was either that and risk a night outside, where I had a rather unfortunate set of choices. Stay in a mortal form and keep the cold from completely destroying me but be killed by predators, or revert to my real form and freeze to death. He looked up at me.

"Aye, what can I do fer ya?"

"I'd like to have, a, um, place to stay?" He looked at me seriously, then laughed, throwing his head back. I narrowed my eyes. Once he finally calmed down, he looked at me.

"Ah, yeah. Sure, go down there. Take a right down that hall" He pointed to a little square tunnel leading deeper into the ground "You're the second door on the left. Free of charge for today, grand re-opening and all." I nodded, my head bobbing oddly up and down on my disgustingly short neck. I turned and walked down the corridor, the laughter roaring up to a deafening point before subsiding. There was a loud crash behind me. I shook it off and opened the door to where I'd spend the night.

Right away I saw a problem.

The room was a good size, a gray cube, which would have been terribly small had I not, you know, shrunk. There were two posts on each side, made of wood, looking like a very low table with the legs continuing past it. On them were white rectangles which flat white sheets on them. I walked over to one and pushed it down, it recoiling under my push. It was oddly soft, and I set my blankets down on it. The problem was this; where would I sleep? In my cave I always slept on a bed of twigs and leaves, to cushion myself. There was nothing like that here, and I didn't think humans could see too well in night. I was pondering this when I heard someone walk in. I whirled around at the moment they chose to talk.

"What the HELL are you doing in my room?" The female was a human like me, about as tall, with odd yellow hair that hung down the back of her head in a tail. I'd never seen hair in a tail before. Maybe I'd do that, just to feel more like myself. Her clothing was less colorful than mine; she wore a blue robe that started around her neck and ended unceremoniously round her ankles. Her gray eyes bored into mine. I narrowed my eyes.

"I was told that I could sleep here. Free of charge, which is a good thing." Her face softened immediately.

"Oh. You don't have money?" Oh, no, I don't, but that must be odd, I mean, it's not like I never had to use money before in my life. Oh wait.

"Um, no?"

"Then how could you afford those- No, it's none of my business. Come on, I'll get you something to eat. What do you want? Chicken, boar-" That cinches it.

"Boar", I snapped at her. I flinched inside. I didn't want to have to depend on a mortal for food, I really didn't. It was, well, just embarrassing. But I, not having a choice in this arctic land, sighed as the woman took me by my shoulders. I flinched, expecting a fight that never came as she lead me out to the loud room full with dwarfs and gnomes again. The human led me to a table.

"Sit down, I'll get you the food." She started to turn around when she paused.

"What would you like to drink?" Huh? What sort of question was that? Drink is water. What did she mean what would I like to drink? Of course it's water.

"Water" She laughed shortly.

"Yeah, fat chance." She turned around. Okay. Sitting. That's next on my to-learn list. I had seen mortals not in the cult sit in chairs before, from a distance, of course. I grip my hands on the chair and pull backward. The chair lifts off the ground and I set it down a good distance from the table. I walk infront of it, with my back to it. Alright then. Slowly lower your body and _oof!_ I fell down onto the chair. Okay, now what? Oh yes, pull yourself back in. I carefully wrapped my legs around the chair legs and gripped the table, pulling me in to a distance I assumed was normal. I sat there, looking at the utter chaos around me.

Gnomes were drinking some weird frothy, pale yellow potion. A larger table filled with overturned mugs had a dwarf male dancing on it, his arms crossed over each other, moving his legs in the oddest movements while his body remained rigid save for his bellowing laughter. Others around him were clapping. A dwarf female reached up and slapped his rear end. Oh great. Here comes a fight.

No fight came. Odd. Was he just going to, take that? That was clearly a sign of aggression. Or maybe it wasn't? I had so much to learn about mortal culture. The human came back with a large slab of burned, salted boar on a round circular 'plate', and a jug filled with clear water. I gently picked up a small bit of the ruined boar, my robe's sleeve pulling back from my left arm. The other human gasped.

"What, _happened?_"

"What do you mean?"

"That scar on your arm. How did you get it?" I looked down and nearly screamed. What was that doing there? That was supposed to be on my back! What was that scar doing on my _leg?_ Ah, sorry. Arm. I swallowed and decided to tell the truth... sort of.

"I got attacked by a twilight whelp by surprise" And that was true enough. Almost the moment after I had hatched one of my brothers surprised me by flying above me and landing on my back, clawing at me before I could twist around and throw him off. One of his marks had gone... deeper than the rest. The woman held out her hand to my scar, but shied away two centimeters from it.

"You fight the twilight then?" I growled low in my throat. Don't blow your cover, come on Selriona, don't blow it.

"I used to." Another half truth. I picked up the chunk of boar meat and stuffed it into my mouth. I had been expecting it to taste absolutely _horrid_, and throw up. The boar meat tasted exactly the same as it had when I was in my normal form. This made so little sense, I chalked it up to a side effect of the transformation. I stuffed more and more boar meat into my mouth, barely chewing it as I devoured it all in minutes. The woman looked at me surprised.

"Hungry are we?" I shook my head.

"No, I've just never had boar before today. It is _amazing_." I looked at the other mortals tipping their mugs up to their mouths, and followed suit. Water splashed horribly around my mouth and some went into my nostrils and I put it down, choking, trying to get the water out. The human just looked at me amused, but said nothing. I tried again, this time tilting up slower. The water perched itself right outside my mouth, and I risked opening my mouth a little. I didn't know what would happen, how fast the water would flow in, but the resulting trickle was very nice, and I soon emptied it.

"Oh, where are my manners, what's your name?"

"Selrio- Selria" You. Absolute. Moron. You almost gave yourself away! This 'being a mortal thing' was tougher than I thought it would be. The woman nodded.

"My name's Amanthe, junior priest for the Cathedral in Stormwind. I know, weird name, right? Well, my dad was a half-elf, so that had some factor in it."

"Wouldn't that make you quarter elf?" She shook her head.

"No, that, part, didn't get in somehow. So, where are you headed?"

"Ironforge, then the tram, then Stormwind" Her eyes widened.

"What a coincidence. I'm going there too." The crowds around us exploded in laughter again, deafening me. "Come on, let's get out of here. They're going to get lewd soon and I am not going to be here. Unless you're into that kind of thing, I won't judge, I won't judge." I rubbed my ear plates, or no, they'd be just ears now, yes? I looked into the small rim of water still in my mug, my completely foreign face staring back, those purple irises burning into me. I looked back up into a corner of the room. In the shadows was a gnome female with short white hair pulled back into something that made it look like she had two horns on the back of her head. She wore a cloth robe patterned white, black, and gold. She was leaning against the wall, and the strangest part was that she was looking _right at me_.

Some gnome raised a mug up, the item completely blocking her from my field of vision. The next moment when it went down, she was gone.

"I, don't, know what 'that kind of thing' is. I won't hazard it." I got up and walked slowly to my room, unsteady from the period of sitting. Getting up was much easier than I had expected though. I leaned against the wall occasionally when my daring for moving faster got the better of me, and Amanthe was waiting for me inside after having passed me a while ago. Inside she was pushing her body out, raising her hands above her head a large ways. I heard several small cracks, and she sighed. I looked as she got into the soft cushion and laid her body out, placing the sheet on her, and laying back, closing her eyes.

"Night." I walked over to my cushion and slowly angled my body onto it, and pulled the sheet over me, and closed my eyes. Almost immediately I opened them. Okay I, I can't sleep like this! I got up and started rearranging the sheet and blankets. I made it look a little like the bottom of an egg, or a shallow bowl if that helps you better (Having thumbs is infinitely more useful than I could have ever imagined.). I curled up on my makeshift nest. It wasn't twigs and leaves, but it would do the job. I closed my eyes.

I woke up to Amanthe nudging me.

"Hey, wake up. Up, it's day." I groaned and opened one eye. I forgot where I was and took in a deep breath to power a blast, but then I remembered I couldn't blast in my current form. I sighed and got up.

"Um, Selria, not to sound rude, but why are you on all fours?" I looked down, and startled, quickly stood up the way a mortal would. "And for that matter, why were you sleeping like that?" She pointed to my make-shift nest.

"It's comfortable. Why were you sleeping like that?" She took a quick breath in, but exhaled slowly.

"Most people do. It's normal."

"That can not be, you know what, forget it. Ironforge, right?" Amanthe nodded.

"Right. Breakfast? It's on me." I looked at her, tilting my head to the side.

"On you? How? I mean, I guess I understand if you bring the food _on_ your hand, but that's-"

"Just, just shut up Selria. Just shut up." I growled, baring my teeth.

"How about, no? Hmm? You're the one saying stupid, obvious things." Amanthe threw her hands up, exasperated.

"It's a light-damned figure of SPEECH, Selria! It means I'm going to pay. Damn it, how do you not know this stuff?" I kept my mouth shut. She was suspicious already. I needed to stay quiet, not question every single unfamiliar thing. "Come on, let's go." Amanthe led me out to the larger room. There were significantly fewer people here, just two female dwarves sitting across from each other.

"Did ah ever tell yeh" She hiccuped. "about that time I killed Deathwing? With me bare hands?" The other one slurred back.

"No, ye did. Tell me, ah want to" She hiccuped as well. "hear all 'bout it" Amanthe rolled her eyes and sighed. I walked over to the table I sat at yesterday and sat down, and she followed suit.

"What are those two drinking?"

"Ale. Pretty much all dwarves ever drink. You, never had ale before? _Ever?_" I shook my head.

"No, can I try it?"

"Um, sure. What do you want to eat?"

"Boar." Amanthe chuckled.

"I can tell already what you have a weakness for." She walked up to the dwarf wiping a rag around some mugs, when the two females started fighting. I smiled.

"Take it" Hiccup again. "back!"

"Nevah! Ah sed everything ah meant about yeh mother!" They brawled, punched, kicked, rolled down the corridor, into a door, and disappeared from sight. After a few minutes Amanthe came back with a platter of boar, some odd meat that had a femur engulfed halfway towards one side by meat, the meat expanding into a very large chunk, and two jugs, one of which she raised to her lips, the other which she gave to me. She picked at her meat, and I devoured mine. Once I had cleared my platter of all meat, I noticed Amanthe looking at me bewildered.

"What?"

"You just ate like a wild animal would."

"Hmm?"

"You just dug your face in."

"Ooooooh. Woops." I raised the jug up and looked into it. The same frothy, pale yellow liquid sloshed around in it. I raised the mug slowly and let the 'ale' pool around my lips, which I parted, allowing the smallest bit to enter my mouth. I instantly set the mug down and started choking. The ale was absolutely awful! It burned my tongue and made my throat feel like I had swallowed some of the foul liquid that had filled my egg after I had changed. I coughed and spat it out onto the ground. The dwarf over at the raised stone was laughing.

"Can't handle our ale, can yeh? HA!" I growled softly at him as Amanthe went back up, and returned with a mug filled with water, which I proceeded to empty. Amanthe just shook her head, muttering.

"Strangest woman I've ever seen." I glared at her. "Oh. Damn, you heard that didn't you?" I nodded. "Well, um, you finished with that?" She took another bite out of her meat. I nodded again, gritting my teeth. "Well, lemme just finish up this hog shank, then we can go. You have any belongings to take with you besides those blankets?"

"No. I don't." Her eyes widened.

"Really, nothing at all?"

"Not a thing." She laid back in her chair, taking several bites of her hog shank, dwindling it's size before replying.

"Damn this war, damn it. Well, l'm not going to eat any more. You want it?" I nodded and took the shank from her, stripping it to the bone in seconds. Amanthe just looked at me stunned. "Appetite like a dragon." I allowed a silent grin as she stood up and faced away from me. Very close to the truth. I wiped the smile-soon-to-be-smirk off of my face and got up. I went back to the room and got my yellow blankets and draped them around me. Amanthe pulled something out from below her cushion, a bag like the kinds the blasted kobolds used, only it wasn't filled with rocks, and was much more elegantly designed. Pictures of demons chasing down innocents and getting destroyed by a veritable wall of arrows circled around it. She opened it up and took out a large fur 'jacket' and draped it around her, hoisting the bag on her shoulders.

"Come on, let's get going." I nodded.

"Agreed. Lead the way, Amanthe." She smiled, and in an instant her smile shattered into a grim flat line, before whirling around and walking back to the main room. I groaned when I saw what I was up against.

Those titan damned stairs.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	8. Chapter 8:Drowning

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>Dun Morogh is cold.<p>

I know that this is a very well known fact. Dun Morogh is in a state of perpetual winter, you'd have to be blind to not see snow anywhere in the region. Dun Morogh has become one of the best synonyms for the word cold, second only to Northrend. Scholars often do studies about 'exactly how bloody cold was Dun Morogh this year', and the snow storms would make even the blue flight ashamed of their relatively warm breaths.

So I feel it is worth restating that Dun Morogh is cold, but of course it is nowhere near as cold when you are warm-blooded and wrapped in six blankets. Of course, it is still cold. Amanthe was walking next to me while I had the layers of cloth wrapped around me like an egg. She had a her thick fur coat on her, and it seemed to be warming her well enough. We had left Kharanos long behind, traveling with Amanthe's belongings and myself. Amanthe was weighed down slightly by her belongings(Which is, in part, why I don't have any), but this only served to place her at my pace. A snow storm had kicked up, a minor one.

Of course a minor storm for the area meant large amounts of snow and little wind. I couldn't see more than three meters ahead of me. The weather had us both feeling miserable, and neither of us talked.

I could have cut the silence with a claw, it was so thick.

That gnome kept coming back to me, the one that had been in the corner and seemed to just vanish. What was she doing? She had been looking right at me. And it wasn't just in Kharanos, either! Every so often, I'd catch the slightest glimpse of her, on the edge of my field of vision, watching me, the snow seeming to avoid her and fall onto a barrier on top of her. I'd blink, and when I looked again, she'd be gone. She had done this ten times when I couldn't take it anymore. I stopped, stumbling a little to catch my momentum.

"We're being followed" Amanthe froze.

"What? By who?"

"There's this gnome female following me. Then I blink, and when I look again, she's gone." Amanthe's eyes didn't once look away from mine.

"We're being followed by a gnome? Why?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. But we'd better keep walking so they can't surround us if there's more than one" Amanthe nodded and started up again.

"But why would gnomes want to kill us?" Oh I have a _very_ good idea why they'd want to kill me! But, then how would they know? "Selria, is there something you're not telling me?"

"No"

"I can tell you're lying. I've got enough mind training to know that much. Start at the beginning. What is with you? You don't act like anyone else I've ever met, and you seem completely unused to culture. Spill." I sighed. Great, as if it wasn't hard enough keeping my identity hidden, now I had to deal with not being able to lie.

"Well, I never knew my father" True. "and I was taken from my mother at a young age" True. "For a while I was convinced that she abandoned me" True. ",but now I know better. So now I'm on my way to Stormwind" True. Amanthe didn't look convinced.

"You're not telling me everything. Why do you act the way you do?"

"That's none of your business!" I snapped at her.

"But-"

"It. Is. None. Of. Your. Business." She held her hands up by her head in the mortal 'I surrender' motion.

"Fine, fine. Since you, um, sorta told me your story, guess it's only fair that I tell you mine."

"I don't care about your story"

"Yes but if we're going to be going to Stormwind together we'd better know where the other is coming from."

"We're not going to Stormwind together" Amanthe rolled her eyes.

"Whatever you say, Selria. Whatever you say." Her words dripped with sarcasm. "At any rate I'm going to say it, you can listen to me if you want or not. I was born in Lordaeron. My father was one of the mages in the Kirin Tor."

"So he must've been powerful then." Amanthe smiled.

"You are listening to me after all." I growled.

"So what if I am? It's better than nothing."

"Anyway, my father was a mage in the Kirin Tor, and my mother" Amanthe's eyes drooped. "You don't need to know. All you need to know is that she died in the scourge. I stayed with my aunt for a large portion of my life until I decided to become a priest. I've been training for five years now. I have the , ahem, skills to prove it."

"Such as?"

"Well I can heal some minor injuries, but I need medical supplies to actually treat it. Otherwise I can't do much more than relieve symptoms."

"Can you fight?"

"What sort of question is that?"

"I've seen priests who can fight, using shadow energy to engage in combat" Amanthe chuckled.

"Well, don't tell anyone, but I've dabbled a little bit in that. I'm not, well, supposed to, though."

"What do you mean by 'dabbled'? Exactly how much do you know?"

"I've killed a kobold with my mind, okay? Sue me." I shuddered at the mention of those vermin.

"Serves it right."

"At any rate, here's the road up to Ironforge. Come on, make a left. No sorry, right." I sighed and tried to spin around to face the correct spot, but just ended up loosing my balance and falling to the snow. I growled and, with Amanthe's back turned, briefly ignited my hands, the blue flames instantly melting some of the snow. I then stood up and followed Amanthe. "You're very clumsy on your feet, you know"

"I'm getting better."

"Slowly"

"Shut up. Let's just get to Ironforge"

"Good idea. No sense to stay out here longer than we need to." Amanthe looked at the ramp spilling upwards, winding the miles away out of sight, sighed, and started to walk up them. I had to angle myself forward so that I didn't fall backward to the ramp's tilt, but as we walked upward, that same gnome female following us flickering in and out of view, I didn't have to. I just... walked up. I began to wonder about Amanthe. She seemed nice enough. I wasn't stupid, I knew that I would need friends to survive the mortal world, and Amanthe seemed like a good candidate. I needed somebody by my side. But in order to do that I'd have to be nice to her. Nicer, anyway. But, given my extremely limited skills with mortal friendships, I turned my thoughts to that gnome.

What was she _doing_ following us, or rather, me, since every time I saw her she was staring right at me. I saw her again just then, and this time I looked at the snow falling towards her. The snow wasn't falling on a barrier, it was slowing down to a crawl. My blood seemed to turn to ice. The gnome vanished again, the snow falling down at a normal speed.

Oh shit.

A bronze dragon never goes anywhere without reason. They travel through time almost, if not just as, easily through the air. If one was following me then something very big was going to happen around me, to me, because of me, I don't know. Trying to get close to the bronze wouldn't work, either. She could freeze me in time and travel to the other side of the region before making me unfreeze; to me it would look like she teleports away. If one was following me, that was, well, it wasn't a good sign. But I was just, me. What could I do in the future, past, whatever, that was so important? I'm just a twilight drake, one of hundreds, maybe thousands.

But I was, as far as I knew, the only one going to live in the mortal world in a disguise. That made me special, didn't it? Titans, what was going to _happen_ to me in Stormwind? At any rate I'd need to keep my eyes open. I didn't know what the bronze wanted to make sure would happen; if I died in Stormwind, killed the king, what? There wasn't anything I could do except stay alert, and _get the hell out of here._

"Amanthe, let's move faster."

"Why, what's going on?"

"Don't ask just run" I started to move my legs faster. My arms started swinging at an accelerated pace. I stumbled, and leaned forward, making my weight pull me ahead. Amanthe was well ahead of me, but I slowly got my bearings.

"Okay, this isn't so hard. Just, yeah" I think I'm getting the hand of this! OOF! I fell face first into the snow and got up, spitting the stuff out, my body heat turning it into cool water along my face. I got up, wiping off my face, and resumed running after Amanthe, away from this cold, away from the snow, away from the bronze dragon following me. But where was I running? I couldn't go anywhere the bronze flight couldn't find me. Nowhere. All I could do was hope for the best.

The best clearly didn't like me, and sent my smashing into a now immobile Amanthe. She stumbled forward.

"Look. There it is. The entry to Ironforge" I looked up. The snow seemed to part before us, giving us a clear sight to the entrance to the dwarven city. It wasn't anything impressive, a square hole on a mountainside.

"So? It's just the entry" Amanthe shook her head.

"You don't get it, do you? It means so much more than an entry. It's the in point to political turmoil, the descendants of the titan's creations, the-"

"It's an entrance" I stated simply. "to the city." Amanthe sighed.

"Philosophy just isn't appreciated anymore. Come on, let's go. These heights are making me nervous. You?" I walked over to the edge of the ramp leading up and looked down. The ground was barely visible.

"Not in the least." Amanthe shook her head, and started walking up.

"Absolutely baffling"

The wind started to pick up around us as the air got thinner, snow blowing into my face. Amanthe shouted over the howling winds.

"Come on! We're almost there!" A huge gust of wind picked up. I stumbled on my feet, but Amanthe must've gotten the worst, because her legs flew out from under her and she soared to the edge of the ramp, holding on by the tips of her fingers, her legs kicking, scrambling for some surface to hold onto, creating a mini avalanche. "AAH! HELP!" I ran towards her, stumbling once or twice. Amanthe's face was hard set, her teeth grinding against each other. I laid down on my stomach and reached out for her hands, grabbing them. Oh great. Now I'm the only thing keeping her from falling down. She looked down.

"Ah! Don't let go! Pull me up! Up!" I pulled my l-arms back up. Interesting. It seems I retained a lot more of my strength then I thought I did. Amanthe came sailing up onto the road, collapsed, panting.

"Oh. Oh gods. Oh my. I almost, I almost died. Thanks"

"Yeah, yeah no problem, we're friends, right?"

"Friends, yeah. How did you pull me up like that?"

"I just, well, did,"

"Wow. Strong. Okay, let's get going. This thin air is starting to get to me" I breathed in the air through my nostrils. It was indeed thinner, but I'd been in higher... heights before. This wasn't anything major. Of course, I wasn't a human then, so, yeah, I don't know. Amanthe pulled herself up and brushed herself, before helping me up. I squinted my eyes and looked around for the bronze dragon. Sure enough, there she was, just on the edge of my field of vision, a slow-time spell protecting her from the snow. She looked my way, and nodded, before vanishing. On the way up I kept talking with Amanthe, slowly warming to her. She was nice, if a little strict on her morals, but she _is_ a priest, even if a junior priest.

The entry to Ironforge loomed infront of us. Multiple stone cylinders stuck halfway out of the mountain, yellow tinted glass windows overlooking Dun Morogh. The entry itself rose up... and up... and up, over-layed by a block of metal with a bronze anvil on it. The entryway stretched back, going up the stairs, splitting to the sides at a gigantic metal statue of a dwarf holding their hands out, holding two weapons. Outside, gnomes and dwarfs walked about, some fighting, some laughing, others talking, others fighting.

I shuddered involuntarily. What was I _doing_ here? This was enemy territory. If they find out who I am I was going to die. I shouldn't be here. Amanthe must've noticed this, because she stopped and looked at me.

"What's wrong?" I shook my head.

"N-nothing. Nothing at all. Let's just get in." Amanthe looked at me with a wry smile, then turned around and walked inside.

The inside made my jaw drop. The bitter cold outside almost instantly turned to a sweltering heat, and I blinked the thermal shock from my eyes.

"Oh wow", we both said at once.

The commons were simply _huge_. People were talking and chattering all over, offering things to 'bid' on. One human male was standing on an overturned crate, holding out something in his hand that looked like a mirror, pointing to seemingly random people, talking in a pace that should have been simply impossible. Another gnome female was surrounded by a crowd, holding up a pair of pink glasses that I heard would 'make everyone attractive'. Riiiiiight. Still another dwarf, standing on a box, was holding out something in his hands, chattering as to who wants to buy it. My throat muscles clenched and my heart sank when I realized what it was; it was a horn from a twilight drake. A low growl started to rumble in my throat.

"Selria, what is it?" I tore my attention from the horn.

"It's nothing. Come on, let's get to the tram" The commons were burning hot, and I caught a glimpse why. In the channel below me was a boiling river of lava. I shuddered. Okay, how about we not fall in there? The military wing was terrifying to say the least. Adventurers were wailing on straw-stuffed dummies, ripping out their being, immolating them, freezing them, turning them to splinters, you understand what I'm getting at.

The blue metal of the Military district arched around me like a prison, and I wanted to fly up to the top. I actually started to tense my legs to jump up, but I caught myself in time. I sighed. I was going to miss flying. One guard stopped me and Amanthe.

"'Ey, you two wanna join the fight? Lots a cultists, elementals, twilight dragons to kill" Don't blast him don't blast him don't blast him don't blast him. I responded through clenched teeth.

"No-thank-you"

"Are ye sure? Gotta have some people to keep tha world from endin'" Amanthe stepped in.

"We're sure, thank you." The dwarf sighed, and walked away mumbling about ungrateful civies, and we continued on. I didn't relax once the entire way through the Military district. When we got a tunnel with a gigantic gear spinning around it, I relaxed almost enough to let my guard down. Only, I didn't, because now I had to watch out for tripping on gnomes.

Because that's all there was there. A glowing yellow sign over the tunnel we just entered in said 'Welcome to Tinker Town!'. Spinning pieces of metal practically replaced the walls. A loud 'woosh' echoed through the place, and a giant red rocket my size with a grinning face painted on the top started flying around haphazardly, a screaming gnome clutching it for dear life. Me and Amanthe both ducked down quickly to avoid it. When we got up we started coughing, wafting away the smoke. We slowly made our way through the place, avoiding the odd green shrink ray that nearly caught us, or the blue death ray that, oddly enough, made the target dummy actually come to life and start dancing.

I looked around for the bronze. Nothing. Of course, with a gnome guise, it'd be rather impossible to find her in this veritable sea of them. Tiny shops were literally everywhere, in the walls, closed doors on the floor, ladders to the ceiling, you name it. Once a mechanical squirrel actually fell right infront of me and burst into a jumbled mess of copper wires, iron plating, and malachite, and a gnome actually popped their head from the shop in the ceiling and asked me to kindly throw that back. I didn't, of course. A red flashing board read 'Possibility of catastrophic success:35%'.

Just a typical day in Tinker Town.

As we turned around, trying to get to the tram's entrance, Amanthe was hit in the face with some pastry covered in brown, sweet smelling sludge. It was a cake. She sighed and wiped the stuff off, flicking it off her fingers to the floor, where tiny metal clouds descended on the mess, sweeping it away.

"Let's get out of here before we get turned into chickens"

"That would be bad. Come on Amanthe, the exit's right there" She lowered her voice.

"Couldn't they have just stayed in Gnomeragon when that giant bomb trap was about to explode?"

"It would make everything easier for everyone, wouldn't it?"

"It would" We both laughed a little before getting a stream of hot, soapy water in the small of our backs.

Finally, we stumbled (Me a bit more than her) into the tunnel leading to the tram.

The tram's waiting room was curiously empty of people willing to wade through Tinker town to get there. Two tunnels faded away into the distance, seats were lined up in rows, some facing to the tunnels, some away. A couple hollow metal cylinders with the tops cut off, filled with all sorts of garbage, were scattered about. A gnome was sifting through one of them, but his skin was a sickly shade of green and he kept muttering about cheese. A board was hanging, with all sorts of random blue and red lines chasing each other over and over. There seemed to be absolutely no pattern behind it. Another gnome came up to us, a male. He had brown hair curled around his head and around his upper lip, like some sort of helm. He wore a white shirt under a green button up vest, a brown belt, and dark green trousers.

"Hey, can I interest you two fine ladies in some rat kabobs? Made them out of fresh rats just this morning, caught right here on the tram" I was tempted to try one, but Amanthe practically screamed.

"NO!" The gnome raised his hands.

"Alright, I understand rat kabobs aren't for everyone. You here for the tram, yes?" We nodded.

"Well, it should be arriving over on that platform any minute. It's a day's travel, you'll get mighty hungry, maybe you want to buy a-"

"No, we do not. Final answer" The gnome sighed, and walked away. I found a seat and fell down into it. Two high pitched chimes echoed through the tram system, followed by a female voice.

"The tram from Stormwind will be arriving at Platform B in five,four," The room began to rumble slightly.

"three" I heard the grating of metal sliding over metal.

"two" There was a thunderous thwa-chunk-thwa-chunk.

"one, enjoy your ride, and try not to die, hee-hee!" Three metal squares, fastened with twisting metal spires all over them, hanging onto a metal rail going deep into the tunnels, flew into sight. There wasn't anybody on board currently. I got up and walked over to the thing. Amanthe joined me, and we both found a cushioned seat on the same 'tram square'. The same two chimes came again, followed by the female's voice.

"The tram in Platform B will be leaving for Stormwind in five seconds" Three seconds later, the tram started moving. At first it was slow, but quickly it lurched, picking up speed. The tram was moving insanely fast, much faster than I could ever hope to. The wind blew in my face so hard I thought it was going to rip off. I closed my eyes to keep anything from blowing into it. The thing wasn't too quiet either. The same thwa-chunk sound kept repeating, over and over again, as the tram sped onward. I thought I saw Amanthe talk, but no words came out of her mouth.

Red lights whooshed past me, and strange orange metal arcs slipped around me, dangerously close to hitting the tram. I closed my eyes to keep anything from blowing into it. I tried to fall asleep, find a rhythm in the deafening noise, but no such luck.

The tram went into a sickening slope downward, and when it leveled out again. It went down again, then level. Down, level. I felt sick, and I leaned over behind me, regurgitating the contents of my stomach. I couldn't help but marvel at the sight around me in both astonishment and fear.

We were in a glass tunnel, stretching smoothly onward, a gigantic body of water all around us. I could see sharks swimming, a gigantic monster zoomed out of my field of vision. It was terrifying, all that water around you, and just a piece of glass separating you from it. I wondered where we were, and how the bloody hells this thing had gotten built in the first place. We kept sailing on through the tunnel, until something happened that made my heart skip a beat. The tram detached itself from the rail. We were both up in an instant, getting off onto the tram's iron floor. That's when I saw it, the crack.

It wasn't a large crack, just a small crack in the glass tunnel. But it was slowly growing, a sickening crackling sound echoing up and down the tunnel. Another chime chime, and the female voice saying that the tram was going into emergency shut down so that nobody could get in from either side.

"Amanthe we need to go. NOW!" She looked up to where the crack was, and immediately started into a sprint. I followed after her, pumping my legs as fast as I could coordinate them. The cracks started getting louder. There was no way we'd get out in time, not at this rate. I cursed myself for what I was about to do. I knew it would blow my cover, no doubt about it, but I'd die for certain if I didn't, as opposed to a tiny chance I wouldn't if I did.

"Damn it all!" I tried to relax my body, to expand, unfurl. And it worked. My clothing dissolved back into my skin, the hues quickly changing to a dark blue. My cloak divided into two and bones began arching through it. My hair became courser, and began to merge and move along my body into tough spikes. My tail-bone expanded, muscle and sinew growing along it just as fast, a club-like ball of spikes on the end. The world around me shrunk and I fell to my four feet, my illusion gone. I jumped up and started to fly forward as fast as I could. Amanthe looked back.

"Come on Selria! Come o-o-on OH LIGHT!" I grabbed her in my paws and held her, stomach down, as close to my stomach as I could. I could feel her squirming, but I didn't care about that. I just had to fly faster, get out of here. I strained my wings, forcing them to go faster and faster, even though it felt like it wasn't possible.

"HELP! SOMEONE HELP it's a twilight drake! Oh I'm going to die I'm so going to die I'm definitely going to die." I didn't care how afraid she was, if I didn't do this she'd be dead. That's when it happened. A terrible ghastly silence filled the tunnel, interrupted only by the beating of my wings and Amanthe's struggles to get free. I looked back. The crack had stopped spreading. Then a terrible noise as the entire glass tunnel a mile behind me collapsed, all the water pouring in, no longer held back, with all the fury and power it had. The tram was instantly shattered, thrown about like a toy. The noise was horrible and nerve-wracking. The wall of water seemed to laugh as it sped towards me. Amanthe stopped struggling.

"No, don't put me down! Faster, fly faster!" I'm trying! Adrenaline surged through me. I was not going to let this happen. I hadn't come all this way to just die! A boat upturned, perpendicular to how it should have been, was pulled off it's narrow balance by the sudden current, and began to fall towards the tunnel infront of me like an axe to a felled tree.

"No!" I tucked my wings in close to my body and dove at an accelerated pace towards the rapidly closing tunnel. The boat smashed through the glass just as I got there, and I actually felt one of the boards clip my tail as I extended my wings and soared out from under it. The boat was blocking the wall of water, only a small trickle coming through. I looked back, and let out the breath I wasn't aware I was holding, and laughed.

My joy was short lived, though. The cracks the boat had placed continued spreading, and soon it was a race against the cracks, which fell down in a curved shape, water quickly replacing the air behind me. I kept going as fast as I could. The cracks were moving at an oddly slow pace.

The tunnel infront of me suddenly burst, a channel of water going sideways. I tucked my wings and flew under the sideways geyser, coming back up. The cracks were speeding up. More of those side-spouts erupted, and I had to be careful to avoid them, dance between them, spinning around just to not get slammed into the wall by the force, and hold onto Amanthe all the while.

Though Amanthe holding onto me for dear life probably helped. I couldn't think through the panic clouding my system. All I knew was that I had to go faster, faster come on! I hadn't even flown this fast trying to get away from Lirastrasza's fireball.

The cracks overtook me, the shards of glass falling down. A splash of the wall of water touched the base of my tail. I gave out a panicked yelp and somehow proceeded to fly even faster than before, glass and water and air and panic blending into a whirlwind. A small barrier erected itself around me, a shimmering bubble of light, and my brain went into overdrive. The world seemed to slow down, but I kept moving as fast. I overtook the cracks again, still dodging the side-spouts. Then the spell lifted, the barrier still around me but the speed gone.

The wall of water roared as it approached me, now going faster than the cracks. Wind rushed past me, air pushed out of the way to make room for the water behind us. I could see the exit! We were so close! Once the water had a level point, it wouldn't go up, it wouldn't have any where to go, unable to displace the air. I looked back, and my hopes sank into nothing. The wall of water was getting very close, rushing at us faster and faster. My barrier faded. We wouldn't make it in time. I yelled at Amanthe as the liquid battering ram closed in on us.

"Take a deep breath!" I heard her take a sharp intake of air, and I did too. There was the safe spot! Ten meters, five!

_WOOSH!_

A bone-shattering crash. Amanthe was ripped from my grip. I looked around in a panic and saw her floating limply, tiny bubbles floating up from her mouth. My stomach was on fire. Drakes are much bigger than mortals, and as such our bodies require more food to sustain themselves, more water, and more air. A human could stay conscious maybe 2 minutes with no air, alive for three, but for a drake like myself, the suffocation timer was five times as fast.

One of the quickest ways to kill a drake is to cut off their air; I was going to be dead in little more than a half minute. I struggled towards Amanthe, grabbing her in my paws. My vision was tinted with red, and tiny orange and yellow specks were floating around.

I beat my wings like flippers, kicked, anything to get to the air not three meters from me, where the water had peaked, unable to displace more air. My body was rebelling against me holding my breath. Against my will my body opened my mouth and tried to take in a breath. I quickly slammed my mouth closed, but the damage was done. Suddenly my entire body was on fire. I couldn't see. I didn't know which way I was going. I didn't even know if I was moving at all.

Air exploded around me, warm and hot. I heaved myself onto a section of iron, placing Amanthe down. I took in deep breaths of air, choking up water. Amanthe had rolled over on her side and was coughing as well, water flowing out of her mouth. I could barely stand up straight. The air was quickly dispelling the buzz from my head. I flopped down on my side in utter exhaustion, fear, and adrenaline withdrawal, facing the now fully unconscious Amanthe.

A shadow seemed to be pushing in from the edges of my vision, slowly, as if my body were so exerted that just passing out was too much effort.

Finally, I fell out of the real world and into the dream world, not caring about all the explaining I had to do.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. And, I think it's time to thank all of you who reviewed my story, wanda von dunayev, Hyrulianfan, IXthy, lisethshade14, and Dusty the Umbravita. Special thanks to Mlaia3 for reviewing, literally, every single chapter.<br>**


	9. Chapter 9:Doubted

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**I have a question for you all; how much does it help for me to put up the current status of my next chapter on my profile?**

* * *

><p>I had the strangest dream that day, or was it night? Anyways, I dreamed of a screaming gnome hanging onto a rocket crashing into a pond and drowning.<p>

I woke up warm and full of energy, but I was soon proved wrong on that last point when I tried to stand up. I groaned and let myself fall back to my sides. I looked around. I was on a dark blue metal floor at a nearly 45 degree angle, a pool of water below me, and a soaked, shivering Amanthe next to me. I grimaced, and shakily got up. I stretched my wings, trying to see the damage. They didn't extend so much as five centimeters before I pulled them back in from the pain caused by all the exertion I put them under to escape.

I slowly and painfully walked over to the shivering human and leaned my head down next to her chest. I didn't hear any fluid in her lungs, which was probably a good sign. I shook myself, the small amounts of water that didn't flow down my scales flying off. I peered down at Amanthe's face. Her lips had gone from the shade of red-flesh to a color more like a cross between me and a red drake. I didn't know much about human illness, but I was pretty sure that wasn't normal. I remembered what I felt like in Dun Morogh, before the patrol of guards had given me the blankets. Would Amanthe freeze? Water could make things feel colder, and her clothing was rather damp, sticking to her skin.

I needed a way to warm her. I could try breathing fire onto a portion of the metal and drag her over it, but no telling how she would react to the temperatures, which I really couldn't control. I yawned, despite the warm, humid air heating my blood and as a result, my body temperature.

My body temperature.

I _could_ warm her using my radiated heat. My front legs started to wobble and I collapsed on my stomach again, groaning as a bloom of searing pain exploded from my legs, paralyzing me. I stood back up and slowly angled my body, grabbing Amanthe in my paws and holding her to my stomach like I had when I carried her out of the tunnel. Almost immediately she stopped shivering, and let out a sigh. I laid down my head, and went back to sleep. My front legs were _killing _me.

I woke up to a little sign in my head screaming 'Something's wrong with your leg!' I gasped sharply, and let out a long moan, waking Amanthe, who was still warming against my body, but now she was dry. Sort of. She stirred, turning around and pushing her face into my stomach, making me flinch in surprise. She muttered something about five more minutes, and then I felt her eyes open, the lashes tracing small paths along my stomach.

We both stayed absolutely still for a few seconds. Then she let out an ear splitting screech and we were both on our feet in an instant. Amanthe crawled back against the 'wall', and I just lowered my head, shaking it in an attempt to relieve the ringing. She was panting heavily, eyes wide with fear, a slight barrier of light around her.

"Now Amanthe, calm down." I took a step towards her, and she stood up, trying to push herself further back. "I'm not going to hurt you. Come on, it's me" Amanthe held out her hand, and the shadows that were caused by the artificial lighting were drawn into her hand, writhing and shifting about.

"Don't get any closer! I'm warning you!"

"Calm down, I saved your life out there, don't you remember?" Amanthe took the hand that wasn't holding the shadows and put it to her head, and shook it off.

"Yeah, so you could eat me here! Only reason you didn't was cause you passed out" I sighed.

"Amanthe, I'm not going to try to kill you, okay?" I took another step forward, and my legs buckled, which made me unintentionally dodge Amanthe's projected beam of shadow. Amanthe fell down, her face pale and bags under her eyes from the effort of holding onto the shadows for so long. I got back up on my legs. What was _wrong _with me? Why couldn't I stand up right? I noticed her hair-tail had come undone in the force of the wave's impact, and was now spilling down over her face, hiding her closed eyes. She was shivering again, but out of fear this time. I sighed, and retracted back to my mortal form.

"There, is that better?" She slowly opened her eyes, and upon seeing me in the form she was most used to, visibly relaxed.

"I trusted you."

"And you still can-"

"No! I can't! Why do you want to go to Stormwind, hmm? Spying? Sabotage? Assassinating? What was I to you? Some expendable asset? Someone to help you get integrated and then cast aside?" Each false accusation made me flinch back.

"No, it, it wasn't anything like that!" Amanthe's voice rose, and she stood back up, facing me, pointing her finger at me, momentarily forgetting that I wasn't a human.

"Then what was it? Hmm? What reason could _you_ possibly have for coming to Stormwind? Well? WELL?" I swatted her hand away.

"I DON'T KNOW! I don't know, I was just, in the wetlands when some dragon illusion told me to go to Stormwind and pretend to be a mortal, ALL RIGHT?" I shoved Amanthe back down, putting more force behind it then I wanted. She forcefully sat down on the iron floor, and pain erupted through my arms. I screamed. Amanthe's eyes went wide.

"Your arms..."

"What about them?"

"They're dislocated" What? Impossible! I raised my arms up to my eye level. Sure enough, they were bent out of the normal human shape. It must've happened when the wall of water smashed into me. It_ did_ have enough force to knock Amanthe unconscious. So _that's _why they always hurt to use. The bones were in the wrong places. I hissed at the injury, as if that would heal the bones. I let my arms flop to my sides.

"Great. Just great. Amanthe, please, trust me. I-"

"Trust you? Why? Everything you've told me about yourself was a LIE!"

"WAS IT? The ONLY thing that I made up was my name!"

"Really? How about when I asked if there was anything you weren't telling me? Well? What about then?" I tried to open my mouth to rebut this, but she was on a roll now. "You told me we were _friends_, Selria, or whatever your name is-"

"Selriona"

"What?"

"My real name, is Selriona. I thought you should know"

'I don't care! I trusted you. I thought we could be friends, I thought you'd save my life if I needed saving!" I narrowed my eyes. I was getting angry now.

"I DID save your life! JUST NOW! I woke up before you. I could've killed you when you were soaked and shivering, but did I? No! I dried you off, I warmed you!"

"LIES!" The shadows around the tram briefly darkened, and I fell to my knees, clutching my head. I felt like red hot needles were being inserted in every millimeter of my body over and over again. When the pain ended, I looked up at Amanthe.

"Fine. Fine. You want to play that way?" I spat every word out with as much venom as I could. Why couldn't she just accept the fact that I didn't want to kill her? Why? Dark blue flames started to burn along my arms. I screamed and charged at Amanthe, but she just held up her hands, and the flames glancing around her barrier, it groaning and deforming under the pressure and heat. I grimaced through the pain my dislocated arms were being subjected to, gritting my teeth against the tidal wave of burning pain. Eventually the barrier gave way, collapsing under my fire.

Amanthe squeaked and ducked down while I stumbled over her previous location. She was behind me again. She said another word under her breath, and the same feeling of being poked by needles filled me, forcing me to collapse and put out my fire. The spell stopped just in time for me to look up and see her struggling to control another shadow beam, pulling it to the right to connect with my head. I ducked under it and allowed my illusion to fade.

I pounced on Amanthe like a cat might a mouse, pinning her arms and legs with mine. She gasped and looked up at me. I took a deep breath.

"I don't want to hurt you! Don't you get it? I don't WANT to be in this war! I almost _died _because of it! And you know what happened during my near-death experience? Well? Do you?" I pushed Amanthe's arms down with more force. "I felt the fear of everyone I ever killed, how sad _all_ their families were, every single _ONE _of them! I don't want to put anyone through that again! I don't want to do that to you OR your family, but titans help me if you make it a question of you or me I WILL KILL YOU!"

I got off her, and she scrambled back up, standing away from me. A little flash of light rippled along her hands, and she rubbed it along her arms. Small tears were forming in the corner of her eyes. I sat down on my hind legs to take the pressure off of my front legs.

"Do you trust me, Amanthe? Please, I think, I think something big is going to happen with me. That gnome following me, I think it's a bronze dragon" Amanthe froze as she prepared another spell. "I don't know what it is, but please, I need someone I can trust."

She lowered her head and stepped forward to me. She paused for a few eternally long seconds, then raised her left hand and let more light flow across it, and moved it along my forelegs. I let out a sigh in relief as the pain seemed to subside. I could tell from the shape that they weren't fixed, but Amanthe did say her healing abilities only extended to symptom relief without supplies. She looked at me.

"Turn back" I sighed, and did so. Amanthe grabbed my right arm and bent it painfully and sharply. I screamed, and before I could glare at her she did the same to the other one. "There, not dislocated." She looked at me apprehensively. "Look, I don't trust you" I lowered my head. "But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, seeing as how you didn't kill me just now." I nodded.

"Well, let's get going?" I forced a smile onto my lips. Amanthe took a step back, and nodded, a disappointed frown on her face..

"Let's go, _Selriona_" The way she said my name was as if she were saying '_I think the Burning Legion's the good side_'. No sooner had we started walking then some faded beams of light were projected down from up high. Amanthe gasped.

"A rescue team. Let's go!" We walked up the ramp of the tram, and shortly arrived at a team of humans in black suits holding flashlights and what looked like medical equipment, and swords to pry open collapsed metal. One of them with a golden lion's head on his suit, over his heart, stepped forward.

"Are you ladies alright? That was a pretty nasty cave in. No-one in the water area would've survived." I looked at Amanthe. They all had weapons. She could betray me to them. She could easily get me killed now. She looked at me, and I could tell that she understood what I was thinking. I was silently begging her. _Don't do it_. My mind flashed back horribly to a red whelp caught in a bear trap, pleading to not be killed...

"We were lucky. We weren't in that part. Can you help us get to, uh, Stormwind?" The human nodded.

"Of course, just walk on over there to Miss Jessica Frostscream over there, she's got a portal opened up for ya." Amanthe nodded.

"Thank you, Mister, uh..."

"Jack, Jack Bauden, SI:7. And you?"

"Amanthe Sivering, and this is..."

"Selria" The man cocked his head sideways.

"Any last name?" I narrowed my eyes, and was about to tell him that I didn't have a last name when Amanthe stepped in.

"She doesn't care to use it." Jack narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. "Come on _Selria_, let's go to the portal" Amanthe grabbed me by my left hand and started pulling me up past the groups of people walking about in the tram halls. I looked at Amanthe and mouthed 'Thank you'. She nodded.

"I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, remember?"

One of the people down here wasn't in the black clothing, but rather in blue/red robes with a few ropes tied around it, and a spherical shimmer next to her. The shimmer had a blurred border, little lines of blue light streaking out into the outside world. The majority of it showed the inside of a tower, with a tall domed ceiling and other mortals,probably mages, walking around. The picture looked so real I felt like I could reach out and touch it. The woman on our side looked at us with cold, glacier blue eyes and nodded.

"There's the portal. Go on, shoo. In you go. Don't worry, it's probably safe I MEAN, perfectly safe" That wasn't too reassuring, but I followed Amanthe into the portal, ducking down and high-stepping into the picture.

The world around me seemed to shift and writhe, vast torrents of energy pouring into the world, so much energy that the world couldn't take it, couldn't _possibly_ take it, there's no way. The world was going to blow up, and then...

I landed on my stomach, and quickly got up, stopping momentarily in my normal position, before getting off my hands and on only my feet. The ground below me was made of green-tinted square blocks, with a diamond pattern or smaller blue squares enclosing it. Bookshelves filled to bursting with tomes of varying size, shape and opaqueness. Some tables were located as well, apprentices fiddling with crystals and books and potions.

What walls weren't covered by books were stained yellow windows, the outside world obscured. The walls curved upward in intricate glass designs far above me. I looked around in wonder when Amanthe pulled me by my sleeve.

"Come on, _Selria_, we shouldn't impose on them any longer. We have places to go." She lead me away from the tower towards a magical gateway with shifting green, yellow, and white light in it, and shoved me through. I felt like I was passing through a thin sheet of water, and when I emerged on the other side, I was completely dry. I looked back and saw an identical portal. Ripples started coming out from the middle of it, and Amanthe broke through, stumbling a bit to catch herself. She stood up and brushed herself off.

"Come on, I have to go to the Cathedral before I can help you get settled." Amanthe lead me down a spiral ramp covered in a blue carpet and to a door. When I stepped outside I forgot to breath.

The mage district was a sprawl of blue roofed, wooden houses, with grass growing between cobblestone paths. The trees scattered around were filled with chirping robins and bluejays, and apprentices walked around, some carrying veritable mountains of books. The sun shown down brighter and more, more clean than I had ever seen it in my life, the purple-shell here was more blue than I had ever seen. In the Highlands the blue was duller, and in the Wetlands and Loch clouds of steam obscure it, and there was a snow storm in Dun Morogh.

A man dressed in a blue shirt walked down the path slowly. He cupped his hands and shouted.

"The Blue Recluse, where EVERYONE knows your name!" Three young(I think) females were sitting around in a circle on the grass, drawing complex designs in the dirt with their fingers, chattering amongst themselves. A spiral of stones circled around the tower to my position, like someone had taken one of the cobblestone roads and suspended it in mid-air. I gaped and stepped forward absent mindedly. I walked to the edge of the spiral path, looking down at the thirty meter drop. I was about to jump down for a quick glide when Amanthe pulled me back.

"Oh no you don't. We _walk_ down. Not fly" I huffed.

"What was I thinking, coming here." I slowly, _slowly, carefully, don't fall_, walked down around the spiral edge of the ramp. Amanthe just walked down it smoothly. Once we were down one of the male human mages walked over. He had gray eyes and yellow hair like Amanthe's but it was shorter and wasn't in a tail behind his head, rather it was simply cut along his face, like a silhouette. It looked down right idiotic. I was starting to see a common theme with these mages. The man's robes were also blue. He looked right at Amanthe.

"Hey there 'Manthe. What are you doing in the quarter?" Amanthe sighed and lowered her head, placing it in her open hand.

"There was an accident in the tram and I took a portal here. I'm going to the Cathedral. Or rather I would be, Samuel, if you'd get out of my way"

"Nice to see you too, Amanthe. How much did the portal cost you?"

"Nothing. It was an emergency." The mage seemed to notice me. "She opened the portal?" Before I could prove him incorrect he started on a tangent. "Oh Amanthe. Amanthe, Amanthe, Amanthe. Mages don't just _give_ out portals. She got something in return, didn't she? I expected better of you, a priestess-" 'Samuel' got a slap to the face by Amanthe.

"It was a mage helping the SI:7. And no, Selria is a friend, and definitely _not_ a mage, you light-damn moron."

"Be careful who you call a moron. I've just completed my Polymorph and What It Means To You exam, I can turn you into a rat now"

"You wouldn't dare-"

"Of course not, not with all these witnesses around. Take care, 'Manthe." The man winked, and walked up the spiral pathway, whistling some tune. Amanthe let out a frustrated growl and we walked on. We walked for another few minutes, me taking in all the blue purple-shell around me. A question kept nagging at me, and I decided that I'd only get an answer if I asked.

"Is Samuel your mate?" Immediately Amanthe doubled over and started into a hacking cough. When she stopped she looked up at me with a murderous glint in her eyes.

"WHAT THE HELLS KIND OF A QUESTION IS THAT?" I shrugged.

"What? I noticed some sort of bond between you two. Why are you blushing? It's not that big of a deal" Amanthe threw her hands in the air.

"NOT A BIG- How is that not a big deal? It's, it's-" I shrugged again.

"It's not a big deal, it's a natural occurrence, just as 'big a deal' as eating or drinking. I was curious, is he your mate?"

"NO! Nonononononono! He's my annoying twin _brother_ for light's sake! That's just, rrgh! Honestly Selri-Selriona! All right, very FIRST thing you need to learn if you want to blend in here. For us mortals, um, 'mating' is a big deal and it's the _last_ thing anyone would discuss with a, um, third party. Light, it's embarrassing enough to discuss it with the other!" Amanthe's face was almost as red as my egg used to be before I was taken.

"But why is it, you know what? I don't care. Mating, embarrassing to mortals. Got it. So your brother's a mage?"

"Yes, yes he is. He's always bragging about how much higher in his profession he is than I'm in mine. Hmmph, if he knew about my dabbling he'd shut up tighter than a goblin's hand around a coin"

"So I'm guessing this shadow magic you know isn't looked highly upon?" She shook her head.

"Not in the least. If priests need to fight it's felt that they should do it by smiting their enemies with the holy light, but that only goes so far. I need some real offensive power in this time of war with cultists, elementals, dragons, err, no offense..." I sighed.

"None taken, I guess."

"So I learned a bit of shadow magic just in case I had to use it."

"I've seen a lot of priests use that sort of magic. It can't be that forbidden"

"Oh it can. There's a lot of shadowy priests out there, but that's because there are even _more_ priests out there" Amanthe shifted the pack she was carrying around, and ruffled in it for a second before pulling out several soaked pages. Hells. Maybe I had dried off Amanthe with my body heat, but her pack wouldn't transfer heat nearly as well.

"Crap! These were important papers to be taken to the Archbishop. Crap crap crap!" I looked at the ink on the pages, only just starting to drip away.

"What ink was that written in?"

"Snowfall ink. Got it for a bargain. Only three gold pieces. Why?"

"The ink hasn't run off yet. I could dry it, if you want." Amanthe looked suspicious.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" I lifted my right hand and ignited my index finger for an instant. "Oh, that." She looked around her nervously. "Okay, we can't do that here, there's probably gonna be all sorts of lovely magic detection wards. Let's go to the Canals, you can dry them off there" I nodded, and we set off again, walking slowly, slowly out of the Mage Quarter.

The Canals were just that; canals. A large moat extended across my field of vision, maybe three hundred meters wide, spanned by a stone bridge. Some shops were set up on the corners, and some houses like in the mage quarter, minus the blue ceilings and replace them with wood colored ceilings, with signs hanging out over them with varying symbols. A metal helmet, a spool of thread, a scroll of parchment. Amanthe led me to a little alley in between two of these houses, and into a dark corner, unraveling the papers. They were a fair bunch of papers, a few dozen inscribed with Common words I couldn't make out(Yes, I never learned how to read Common. Why would I have?), and a lion head in the bottom right of each.

"Okay, do your thing, just don't catch them on fire" I nodded.

"Right" I held my hand about a third of a meter from the papers and let small blue flames roll along it. The papers started curling, small bits of steam coming off. One part began to turn brown when Amanthe pulled it back, bone dry.

"Okay that's enough" She rubbed the paper between her fingers. "The ink's still a bit smudged, but it'll do. Thank you, you've really saved my skin"

"What are those papers for anyways?"

"Well, I was taking a report in, uh, Menethil, about the damage done to the local chapel. I took a gryphon to Ironforge, but a couple of cultists shot me down. They were riding" Her mouth compressed into a flat line. "drakes" I sighed and looked at the ground.

"Let's go and deliver the papers" Amanthe nodded, and showed me the way to the Cathedral district. Once again, my jaw dropped when we had gotten past the initial tangle of streets to the pavilion.

The Cathedral was simply HUGE! I stretched so far up I had to crane my neck almost straight up. Needle-like spires of brown glass rose up like nails posed to impale the purple-shell. A grand series of stairs, bisected with a blue carpet with a yellow edge, rose up to the main body of the structure. Blue windows were standing tall and proud along almost every single wall, about as tall as Valiona was. A huge fountain, the size of Halfus's rookery, was in between me and the Cathedral. Water poured out in intricate designs, and there was a statue of a human male clad in armor in the middle, water flowing out from him. Amanthe and I walked up to the base of the mount of steps.

"Right, well, this is probably as far as you should go. They might notice the shadowy stuff on you" I rolled my eyes.

"Thank you for pointing that out."

"I'm serious. The Archbishop would see through you in seconds-"

"Like he saw through Onyxia's disguise?"

"Onyxia was a fully grown dragon and even before that Deathwing was in an illusion, he could have shrouded anyone's senses. You are not-an aspect or a fully grown dragon. You are still a drake, Benedictus will see right through you. Please, just stay out here"

"I thought you didn't trust me" She grimaced.

"I didn't"

"So what changed?"

"You didn't kill me in the alleyway, AND you didn't incinerate my papers" I smiled.

"Thanks. I need someone I can trust to get through this." Amanthe looked down at her papers.

"Well, I should go. I'm likely late as it is" Amanthe walked up the steps. Key word, walked. Why, if she was late? Wouldn't she like to minimize how late she was? I found a bench to sit down on and did so. I was getting the hang of this body. I sat down and watched Amanthe disappear into the Cathedral. I sighed and let myself relax, and closed my eyes. I woke up to something getting dumped on my lap. A man in a black suit with an upside down white triangle in the middle, with a broad,tall black hat and a monocle in one eye was standing next to me, and there were some rounded bits of copper in my lap. I picked up the odd rounded copper and held it back to him. He seemed taken aback.

"Ungrateful little vagrant. I'm giving you money" Vagrant? He thought I was a vagrant?

"No, I'm just waiting for my friend, she's in the Cathedral" The man huffed, and took the money back and stormed off. I sat there for what seemed like hours, waiting for Amanthe to come back. A group of human whelps were walking around, escorted by a woman. They marveled at the Cathedral for a while, and walked on. Finally, Amanthe came out, as the sun was starting to creep towards the horizon. I walked up to her.

"Well? How'd it go?" She rubbed her back.

"I, um, would rather not talk about it. Come on, let me show you my house. It's getting late, I can show you how to get a job tomorrow" Amanthe led me out of the Cathedral district, around the canals, over some bridges, into another part of Stormwind, where the houses had orange roofs. Amanthe led me to a non-assuming house, one that didn't stick out. The inside of Amanthe's house was made of cleverly bolted together wooden beams, and a table with several chairs, and some white plates with shaped pieces of metal next to them. Oil lamps lit up the room with a flickering flame which she blew out shortly, only to reveal more distant ones. A doorway led to stairs going up.

Crap.

"Come on, I'll show you where you can sleep tonight" I sighed and slowly, agonizingly slowly, made my way up the stairs, kilometers behind Amanthe. By the time I got up my nerves were shot from focusing so much on not falling back down. I shuddered.

"I hate stairs so much" The hallway beyond the stairs curved back in on itself, like a U. At the turn of the U was one doorway, and at the end of it was another. From where I was standing I could just make out a bed in the doorway at the curve, and both led to rooms with more flickering light in it. Amanthe walked into it.

"You'll be sleeping here tonight" I looked at the sheets. Amanthe walked out of the room. "I'll be right back, I just have to change" She fled into the other doorway and returned in a few minutes in a white shirt and blue linen pants.

"You might want to, erm, change out of those robes. People don't usually wear them unless their in a job which requires them to. Even then, they don't wear them when not at their job" The idea of a job confused me, but then, so did money. Amanthe explained it to me.

It was supposed to be simple. You hunt your own food, and find your own den. But it had to be so complicated here. People not only had to work for something beyond their own lives, they had to do so to receive flat pieces of metal. And apparently your worth was determined by how much money you had, and if you didn't have enough you would lose your home and couldn't buy food.

"Why would you need to ask for food from somebody else? Why not just hunt your own?" Amanthe scratched her head.

"Well, it's not that simple. We don't hunt much, we have people who specialize in hunting gather food, that they then give to the store owners in exchange for money, and the store owners replenish their supply of money by selling it to others." I shook my head.

"That is so needlessly complicated" Amanthe sighed.

"Well, not all of us are good at hunting, but we have other valuable skills"

"You can _get_ good at hunting"

"Yes but why do you have to learn to hunt if you can just-"

"What if you run out of your money? How would you eat then?" Amanthe shrugged.

"Beg for money off of others or steal" I shook my head.

"And notice, hunting isn't in those options. Amanthe, tomorrow I am teaching you to hunt. This is just absurd"

"Alright we can deal with all that later. So, um, change?"

"Right" I looked at Amanthe's clothes, and nodded my head. Again the flow of magic rushed through me, and when it stopped my robes had turned to a near replica of her's.

"That's just creepy. Well, good night Selriona." She started to head to her room when she stopped and looked back at me. "In case you really are just trying to earn my trust,"

"I'm hurt"

"Remember this. I'm putting my faith in you. As a priestess that means a lot. I'm staking my life on you. Don't disappoint me"

"You don't have to worry about that" I walked over to my lamp. "How do I put this out?"

"Just blow it out" Simple enough. My room went dark, and my eyes instantly adjusted to the dark. I walked over to my bed and rearranged the sheets into the same shape I had in Kharanos. I curled up on it. This was it. For some bizarre reason the forces that be have chosen to dump me here. How long would I stay here? Certainly not my entire life. I hadn't seen that bronze dragon in Stormwind. Maybe they had left me alone for now? Or maybe she just got better at hiding. Maybe this 'live in Stormwind' thing could work out to my advantage, and Amanthe's.

Not knowing how to hunt? There was no excuse for that.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. <strong>


	10. Chapter 10:Friend

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**No, this story did not die. I will never abandon this or any other story, even if I do not update for months, it simply means I am writing another story.**

****I have a question for you; how much does it help for me to put up the current status of my next chapter on my profile? Please leave it in a review.****

* * *

><p>I woke up curled up in my bed with someone pushing at my side. I was up in an instant. Amanthe took a step back, and sighed.<p>

"Selriona"

"What?"

"You're on all fours again" I felt blood rush to my face and stood up on two legs. "Okay, come on, breakfast" I followed Amanthe across the U of the upper floor, tumbled down the stairs(And I would probably have broken something if Amanthe hadn't hastily woven a barrier of light around me, thanks for that).

Amanthe led me over to the table.

"Sit down, I'll explain things" I pulled out a chair and sat down. I was getting the hang of this, except for those damn stairs. Amanthe walked up to a few shelves and got some food out. She put some sharp smelling yellow chunks onto my plate, and placed some soft, porous white stuff encrusted with something brown next to it. They both looked simply disgusting.

"Amanthe, what is this supposed to be?"

"Cheese and bread" I poked the 'bread'. How did mortals _eat_ this stuff? It was revolting to just look at it. Amanthe got more cheese and bread and placed it on another plate, and sat down on the corresponding chair.

"Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't have table manners" I cocked my head sideways.

"Right, I didn't think so. Now, it's considered impolite to eat in a certain way, namely, the way you have been.

"How can it be impolite to eat a certain way?" Amanthe shrugged.

"A culture thing. Just, look at the way I eat the bread" Amanthe picked up the bread by it's crust in one hand, brought it up to mouth level, and took a small bite out of it, before placing the bread back down, chewing with her mouth closed.

"There, now you try"

"There is no way I am eating that"

"Just try it. I'm putting a lot of faith in you, try to return it" I sighed.

"Alright" I picked up the bread like she had, and brought it to my mouth, and slowly reached out my mouth and took a small bite, like she had. The bread tasted much better than I had expected. It tasted like, well, there wasn't anything to compare it too. It tasted good though. I started chewing, when Amanthe called me out.

"Selriona, close your mouth."

"Hmm? Ok" I closed my mouth, and moved my jaws while focusing on keeping my lips closed. Soon I decided the bread was chewed sufficiently, and swallowed it with ease. At least swallowing hadn't changed. "And that's it?"

"Well, not quite. There are a few basic principles behind that. One, chew with your mouth closed. At all times, no exceptions. _None_. Now, the second thing is using the fork" Amanthe picked up one of the shaped pieces of metal with four prongs on the end, before setting it back down. "and fork." She picked up what looked like a flattened metal stick, but one of the ends looked much sharper then the others, like a dagger. "Now, these are used to help cut down large pieces of food into smaller pieces, like this" Amanthe took her cheese wedge and laid it sideways, impaling it with the fork's prongs, holding onto it's handle with the other. She moved her knife along the edge of the cheese with it's sharp end, slowly moving down, eventually cutting off a small part of the cheese, putting the flat of the knife on the larger piece of cheese, and using it as leverage to pull her fork out. She impaled the small piece, raised it to her mouth, and repeated the bite-closed mouth chew-swallow. She looked at me.

"Now you try" I winced slightly, and picked up the fork, stabbing it into the cheese with all the strength I could, resulting in a terrible screech when it hit the plate. "Not so hard!"

"You could have told me that"

"I just assumed you knew it! Sorry, keep going" I sighed, and picked up the knife, doing the same motions she had, albeit about five times slower. I set the fork and knife back. The cheese was an odd taste, salty, but something else, something utterly and solely cheese.

"Like that?"

"Good enough. Okay, let's eat. After that I am taking you to get a job"

"And after that I am taking you to teach you how to hunt" Amanthe looked up at me. I crossed my arms over each other, an oddly comfortable position, and glared at her.

"Y-y-you were serious about that?" I nodded. "Oh you don't have to do that"

"Yes, I do. You need to learn. There is no excuse for not being able to hunt"

"I never learned how!"

"Then we need to start all the sooner" Amanthe put her elbow on the desk and raised her forearm, resting her head into it briefly, groaning.

"Just, just eat" I nodded, and began to eat the bread and cheese. It filled me up alarmingly fast. Normally this wouldn't have even dented my hunger, but now as a human, it did so very well. I finished at about the same time as Amanthe. I think she slowed down for me, and that made me a little embarrassed. I got up from my chair, holding my arm up. Amanthe stood up and stretched her arms up again, a series of small cracks going through her back. I repeated the motion, and pushed my arms up as far as I could. I gasped when I felt a few snaps in my body, but afterward I felt so much looser. It felt good. My shirt's sleeve had rolled up, and Amanthe was looking at my scar again.

"So how did you really get that scar?" I looked at the faded white line.

"What, this?"

"Yeah, you told me a twilight whelp attacked you by surprise, how did you really get it? Sorry if I'm sounding nosy, but-"

"I told you the truth about that. I really _was_ attacked by a twilight whelp" My mind briefly flashed to me a whelpling, newly hatched not even two minutes ago, slicing my sister's throat open. There was something about the voices that had made me want to do that. I wondered, if I hadn't heard the voice, but still became twilight, would I have attacked her? I shook my head. The voices and being a part of my flight went hand in hand. End of story.

"What?"

"Well, we fight among ourselves a lot."

"Um, okay then. Let's go get you a job then"

"Exactly how do I do a job here?"

"Well, the Cataclysm left a lot of businesses without employees. You can probably find a store owner desperate enough to accept someone with no schooling or experience or knowledge of these things-"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry but it's true! Um, one second, let me get changed. People will look at us funny if we're wearing the same clothes" Amanthe ran up the stairs, leaving be baffled as to how she could move up those things so fast. It shouldn't be possible. When she came back down she was wearing a green vest and an odd light pink pants made out of some sort of silk.

"Alright, let's go. Now, I think you'd do well at the Scribe of Stormwind, I hear they're looking for a new parchment vendor. They sell inscriptions, and I think you'd do well there, it's not too hard as far as jobs go. Come on, I'll bring you there, then I have to go to the Cathedral to train" I nodded.

"Alright, let's go and get it over with. At least it can take up time while I figure out why exactly I'm here" Amanthe nodded, and walked out, me right behind her. We turned through the streets of Stormwind, and every time we passed a guard my throat constricted, like that would be the guard that saw through me. Soon we got to the Mage Quarter again, passed a few guards, and Amanthe herded me into a small building with all sorts of tables covered with paper and little bottles of ink and more bookshelves like in the mage quarter, all of them lined with books. A couple humans walked around, leafing through pages, holding bottles ink to eye level, and writing with pens on the scrolls of parchment. Amanthe led me up to a human female standing behind one of the tables.

"Amanthe! What brings you here?"

"Well Catarina, I'm actually wondering, do you have a job offering?"

"YES! Yes, we need someone to sell the parchment, why, you interested?" Amanthe held up her hands.

"No, no, actually my friend here is" Catarina turned her attention towards me.

"Has she any other work experience? You know what? Don't answer that. She's hired" My eyes widened briefly in shock. That was fast.

"Um, what?" I asked.

"You're hired, starting now. Come with me, I'll run over the job description quickly" She pulled me to a back room, and started talking. I glanced back, catching Amanthe waving her hand and walking out. Oh titans what was I doing here? Catarina started shuffling around a few bookshelves.

"Now, you're job is that, when someone tells you they want to buy a certain piece of parchment, you take it from them and hold it up to this chart" Catarina pointed to a chart with all sorts of varying fragments of parchment on it, with gold, silver and copper circles painted next to each. "Whichever one matches, that's how many coins it costs. So for instance," She held up a small scrap of a dull yellow paper up to the chart, moving it around briefly, before stopping. "this is made of Khadgar's whiskers dried with troll's blood potion. So it costs..." She tapped the painted circles next to it, five silver and eighty-five copper, in rows of five. "Five silver coins and eighty-five copper pieces. Just do that with all of it, and then ask for the money from them. Are you following this?"

"Um, yes. Hold up parchment to chart, the chart tells me how much it costs" Catarina nodded.

"Good, good. Now, ask for the money from them. If they give all of it to you, take the money and give them the parchment, put it at the little drawer at the bottom. If they give you more than they have too, that's alright, just take all of it and give them the parchment. Also it's multiplicative, so if they ask for two pieces of the same parchment it's twice, three pieces three times, so on and so forth-"

"And if they ask for two different types?"

"Well it's simple, take the price of each type and add them together. Hundred coppers to a silver, hundred silvers to a gold, but of course everyone knows that" I don't!

"You got all that?"

"I guess" I sighed. Great. This was going to be _wonderful_.

"Okay good. Your shift is..." Catarina ran outside quickly and looked upwards, then ran back inside.

"Your shift is until five in the afternoon, it's eight in the morning right now, that's seven hours. Err, wait, no, that's nine hours, sorry. Well, get to it!" Catarina pushed me out into the main store, and pushed me behind a table with a similar chart behind me. I looked at all the people in the store, sorting through inks and parchments. Why did they even need this stuff? She whirled around back to me.

"Oh, yeah, ask their names and tell me who they are, what they're buying and how much of it. Need to put it in the records" I nodded, and stood by the chart. A few people came up to me and asked how much it was, and to buy it, and I just went through the procedure. Hold it to the chart, count the pieces. I told Catarina the names of each person and what they bought, and she scribbled it down onto a piece of paper.

"Why do you need their names?"

"Company records"

"What good are those for?"

"Well, in case someone steals, we can use them to help us, or to know how much money we make, so we can compare past sales to current sales"

"Oh. Okay then" More people kept coming. The following hours were some of the longest hours in my life, almost as long as those terrible days when I had lain on the floor of the Wetlands, my tendons broken, unable to move...

There was one mortal, I think the term is customer, that really surprised me. It was a blood elf who walked in, a male, maybe halfway through adulthood. He had the trademark green glowing eyes and wore rusty yellow plate armor that left his arms open, except for the leather gloves, all of it a rusty yellow. He immediately walked over to a parchment and took it out, and brought it to me. It was a few folds of deep blue parchment, almost the same color as my scales, but with a reddish tinge.

"I would like to buy this, please" His eyes flared briefly when he looked at me. I noticed this.

"Is there a problem?" I noticed nobody else was seeing him. He smiled.

"No, no problem at all" He was hiding something from me, I knew it. I let it go, and held up the parchment, moving through the charts until I found it. I turned back.

"That'll be eleven gold pieces and fifty copper" The elf nodded and fished out the money from his armor. Wha-huh? I put the money into the spot and gave him the parchment, when I remembered something. "Wait" He froze. "I need your name, for the, um, records" His mouth pursed.

"My name is Jeziba. Thank you... Selria" He turned out, and I walked over to Catarina.

"Someone named Jeziba asked for, the one that costs eleven gold and fifty copper" She looked at the chart.

"Which one? The dark blue one or-"

"The dark blue one, yes" She nodded.

"And you said his name is Jeziba, right?"

"Right"

"Okay, thanks, you can go back. You have three more hours on your shift" I nodded and walked back. Once I got back I froze, remembering how nobody had noticed that there was a blood elf right inside the capital Alliance city. And his last words to me...

_My name is Jeziba. Thank you... Selria_. I'd never given him my name, let alone my fake name. How had he _known_?

I went through the next three hours much faster, my body on autopilot as I wondered over and over again how the hells he had known my name! I was snapped out of my thoughts when Catarina walked over to me.

"Hey, your shifts over" She opened her hands and gave me several pieces of rounded, flat metal.

"There's your pay for today, come back tomorrow at the same time. Amanthe's probably on her way here right now, why don't you wait outside for her?" I nodded and went out. I looked at the metal in my hand.

What use could that have for me?

A human female whelp ran past me, being chased by a male whelp, shouting at her to 'give it back, give it back!' He crashed into me, knocking me down. I growled and got up. My hands felt warm, and I could feel the flames just begging to be released into a fireball at him. I clenched my teeth and held back. I got up and looked around me. There, in the distance. Amanthe was slowly walking back, with a little limp in her right leg. I ran up to her, at a somewhat slower pace than I should have been able to. She stopped when she saw me.

"Hey" She looked at the people around her. "Selria. How was your" She winced. "job?"

"Boring as all hells. What happened? You're limping?" She waved her hand.

"Discipline training. Pays off in the end, but it's torture to go through" I nodded. I had seen what sort of training the cult had. They would send a promising recruit to slaughter one of the failures. If they returned, they would be promoted. If they died, the failure would take their place and be promoted. A trainee who might have been the next ascendant could lose to a worthless ex-farmer because of some bad luck, or a triggered phobia, or an allergy. It was fast paced, it was ruthless, and very flawed. I brought my mind back to the present.

"Do you have a weapon?" She stopped.

"What?", she flatly asked me.

"Well I know from experience humans don't have strong natural weapons, and you need some form of weapon to hunt-"

"I can't believe you're making me do this!"

"You had me get a job here, you _are_ learning to hunt. Now, do. You. Have. A. Weapon?"

"Well, I have the shadow magic"

"That won't make it healthy to eat, though" Amanthe tapped her head, in a space right next to her left ear. It looked tender.

"Well, I can smite them, the light is generally a quick death and does not corrupt"

"Good enough. Now come on" I started walking when Amanthe grabbed me by the back of my neck. I spun around and hissed at her. She held up her arms in crossed positions at her chest.

"You're going the wrong way. The gates are this way" I felt blood rush to my face again. I walked the other way.

"Of course it is"

We walked through the teal roofed houses of the trade district, and I couldn't help but grin at the burned towers with claw marks in it. Deathwing's work. Amanthe noticed my grin.

"What are you smiling at?" I pointed at the claw marks, still burning red with heat.

"That"

"That's terrible. People died from that" I looked at her confused.

"No, they didn't. Unless they were on the tower when Deathwing landed, nobody died"

"I'm not talking about the tower I'm talking about _who_ caused the damage!" I sighed.

"Well, yeah, that is terrible" We walked through the bridge, stepping over some cracks in the bridge when a statue had fallen. I couldn't help but shudder at the water. It could kill me so quick.

"So exactly what skills do you have with hunting, Selriona?"

"Well I hunted for food when I was still stationed at the Bastion. Stag, some wolves and owls, a ram or two if I was lucky.

"That's... just meat"

"Drakes are carnivores"

"You ate cheese and bread just this morning!" I shrugged.

"Humans aren't carnivores"

"Speaking of food, did you have _any_ lunch?" As if on cue, my stomach growled.

"No, I didn't."

"Dinner?"

"Hmm, nope" We reached the gates. Amanthe changed my name around the guards.

"Let me make this very clear, Selria, I don't want to learn how to hunt"

"Well you have to. You'll thank me later"

"Oh I highly doubt that" We kept walking down the road, stones lined up along the grass. When we were far enough away from the city I grabbed Amanthe's shoulders and pulled her to the right into the woods.

"Alright now, the very first thing you need to learn to do is hide your smell. Animals can smell you coming from a very long way, and will run away if they smell you. Usually. If they don't, run, that means they are thinking about eating you."

"Right, got it. Smell, bad. So what do I do about it?"

"Well, there are a couple things you can do. The first is covering yourself in the surroundings"

"What exactly do you mean by THAT?"

"Roll in mud, cover yourself in branches, grass, that kind of stuff. Works quite well, actually" At Amanthe's horrified look I continued. "Well, some types of magic work just as well. I think that barrier thing of yours would work, hold in the smell. But, do you have any way of, you know, dimming it?" I said, looking up at the dusk sky.

"Well, not really, no"

"Then that won't work. Not at night anyway, or any dark place. They will see it, and they will run. So you need to cover yourself in your surroundings, since it IS getting pretty dark"

"I am not covering my clothes in mud and grass!"

"If you don't I will resort to burning them off of you"

"You can't be serious!" I opened my hand and let tiny blue flames dance along it.

"Just try me.

"Honestly, Selriona!"

"Smell. Cover. Now." Amanthe sighed and started grabbing globs of mud and spreading it on her, attaching branches, and rolling in the grass. After a few minutes of grumbling, she was almost entirely unrecognizable.

"There, happy?"

"One second, let me check" I let my illusion fade, and Amanthe jumped back a little, closing her eyes. I got up close to her and took several whiffs of the air. Satisfied, I shifted back.

"Good, that works. Now, you have to refresh that every half hour at the very most, ten minutes would be ideal" Amanthe growled at me.

"Have I mentioned that I hate this?"

"Yes, but you're welcome to mention it again, it won't change anything"

"I hate this so much"

"Moving on. Now that you have your smell covered, you need to learn how to move slowly. Your cover will help, all that mud, grass and tree branch will give you some degree of camouflage. Now, you have to move VERY slowly. Most animals will almost always notice anything more than a half centimeter of movement per second."

"Light, that slowly?" I shrugged.

"Well, you can either do that or try your luck at outrunning them..." Amanthe wiggled her fingers.

"I can do that"

"How? You're still only human-"

"Yes but I've learned a few tricks. My barriers can give me quite a speed boost. I think I did that to you in the tram, I can't remember that too clearly" I pointed my finger at her.

"Oh yeah, I remember that! Ok, so you can outrun them, good. Just make sure you get close first, otherwise they'll hear you and run before you can even see them. Now, look around. What tracks do you see?" Amanthe looked around for a few moments, then back at me.

"Nothing" I shook my head.

"Look again. On the ground there, those are tracks, boar tracks..." My mouth started salivating, but I swallowed it down. "So which way does the boar go?" Amanthe stayed silent for a while before pointing the correct way. "Good. Now, let's see how you do. I'll be watching you" Amanthe groaned again.

"Have I mentioned how very much I hate this?" I rolled my eyes.

"No, you haven't. Just go, and remember. Refresh the smell cover, move really, really slowly to sneak up on it, even if it is sleeping. Animals always sleep with one eye open, so to speak. Oh and don't make a noise beyond a quiet whisper" She nodded.

"Alright. Alright. I'm going" Amanthe started off crawling agonizingly slowly. What I didn't tell her was that I never had to do all that; I could hear and smell prey from farther than they could me, and I was always faster than them. I could hear and smell, even in mortal form, that there was a boar ten meters infront of her. It was sleeping, a male. I had to hold myself back from lurching at it and killing it myself, it smelled _so _good, and I knew from experience how good boar meat was. Amanthe slowly crawled forward at the slow pace. I looked at her, smiling. Ten minutes later she was halfway there. Way to fast! I caught up with her silently, and whispered into her ear.

"Better refresh your smell, and move slower!" She grumbled, and whispered.

"Stupid dragon"

I whispered back.

"First point, I'm not stupid. Second point, it's drake. Dragons are fully grown, drakes halfway to being dragons are considered adults; I'm adolescent" She looked at me.

"How old ARE you?"

"Shhh! I'm three years old, not counting how long I was in my egg"

"WHAT? YOU'RE THREE YEARS OLD?" I heard a squeal and a ruffling, and put my hand to my face.

"And, you scared away the boar. Don't be so loud"

"You, you, you're THREE YEARS OLD?"

"Well, I spent one year as a whelp, and normally it's a hundred years as a drake, but it was I think a few months ago my aging was sped up. I'm going to be fully grown in two more years"

"You're three years old!"

"Um, yeah, is that a problem?"

"Well it's just that all other three year olds I've met were still babies!"

"Oh. That explains a lot. I don't know much about human life cycles" I looked around, and sighed.

"We've, or rather, you've just ruined any chance of hunting with your shouting. Let's go back to the city"

"Looking like THIS?" Amanthe spread her hands out, gesturing to all of her.

"Oh you'll be fine. Come on, let's go back" Amanthe groaned.

"Wait, how did you know there was a boar there?"

"I smelled it" She punched me in the shoulder.

"I hate you so much"

The trip back to Stormwind, Amanthe kept her head low and her face covered, not daring to look anyone in the eye as they looked at her completely covered in mud and grass, with a few leaves here and there. She'd brushed most of it off, but it still was caking her. The moment Amanthe was in her house she barged up the steps. I heard some grumbling about never being able to wear it again, the ripping of fabric, and Amanthe came down in the same clothing I had shifted to. She walked over to the shelves and got out some food.

"Oh, that reminds me, Catarina gave me this" I gave Amanthe the money I had gotten from the inscription shop. "I don't have any idea what I could use it for, so here" She pushed it back to me.

"I couldn't, it's yours"

"Amanthe, honestly. What could I possibly do with this?"

"Well, I don't know, buy stuff?"

"What would I need to buy?"

"You don't only have to buy things you NEED"

"But, well, that's pointless"

"It doesn't need to have a point"

"Look just take the money" Amanthe grabbed the money.

"Fine" She took out some pieces of meat as well as bread and set it on the table. I was eating some weird mysterious meat, making very sure to use proper 'table manners', when I heard Amanthe's voice.

"So how did I do with the hunting?" I looked at her.

"Good, good, just be slower next time, you moved too quickly. Five meters in ten minutes? No, slow down. It should have taken you half an hour to reach the boar, it was ten meters from you. And be more quiet next time, and refresh the smell"

"Got it. And another thing about table manners, don't talk while you have food in your mouth"

"So many rules"

"Again, it's a culture thing. So we can stop going to hunt, right?"

"No. You are not stopping learning to hunt until you are good at it" Amanthe groaned, letting her head fall into her plate. When she pulled her head up she seemed to be thinking of something hard, but stayed silent.

"What are you thinking about?" Her head shot up.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Just, nothing, let's just finish eating. I'm going to go to sleep"

"Okay, I guess I'm a little tired as well" To be honest though, I wasn't. I hadn't done anything truly exerting all day, I had lots of energy to spare. I even walked up the stairs without a problem. What was up with that? I got into my room, stretched, and prepared to lie in the bed when Amanthe walked in. She was lacing her fingers together, like she was nervous about something. She sighed. I could faintly hear her heart drumming fast.

"Selriona, can I, ask you for something?" I looked at her.

"What?"

"Well, um, it's just that I've never, and the few times you were I couldn't get a, uh, good look, so, uh, oh screw it, could you shift back? I've never gotten a good look at a dragon before" I rolled my eyes.

"Drake, and sure" I took a deep breath and let the illusion ripple off of me. My clothing hardened and changed color, merging with my skin. The hair on my head once again coalesced and hardened into a few spikes. I shuddered a little as my wings and tail unfurled from titans know where. Eventually I stopped changing, and my actual form was in the room. It was a tight squeeze, and I had to curl around, draping my wings close to my body to keep them from hitting anything. For some reason they tingled slightly. Huh, probably nothing. I shook my head side to side a little. I turned my head to Amanthe, who was breathing heavily. I smiled.

"What?"

"It's just, I keep expecting you to kill me at any second" I shook my head.

"Again, I'm hurt"

"What's it like, having to be in a different form? Doesn't it feel small?"

"To be honest? No. It's not like compressing myself into a small boundary, I actually become smaller" Noticing her expression, I added: "Oh come on, I'm your friend, honestly" Amanthe swallowed and took a few steps closer until she was right by my side. I sighed and laid down, resting my stomach on the boards. The space meant I had to curl around a little. Amanthe kneeled down next to my stomach, raising a hand up closer to the soft flesh, which made me tense up for a moment, making her hesitate. It wasn't her, it was just that my stomach was one of my most vulnerable points. No armor, lots of vital organs, it was one of the worst places to be attacked. I remembered pinning him under me, my claws digging into his stomach would have made most drakes surrender, but not Verthel, Verth, Ver-. I relaxed myself.

"It's okay, just, some bad memories" Amanthe reaches out, touching my stomach gently. Even so arcs of lightning seem to move up and down, the stomach also being one of the most sensitive parts of our bodies; strikes there are not only damaging, but painful. I force myself to remain still. She shivered slightly, and moved her hand up to one of my scales, moving it slowly over it.

"You're warm. All the stories I've heard about twilight drakes you're cold" I curled my head over at her, Amanthe not looking me in the eye. That stung a little.

"Well, we're usually stationed in places that aren't exactly warm"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, we're cold blooded. The environment we're in changes our body temperature"

"Oh, I see. So, exactly why do you think you were sent here? I mean, you said some illusion of a dragon sent you here. Can you... describe this illusion?" I felt something warm against my chest and side; Amanthe was leaning against me, probably without even knowing it. I fought to suppress a smirk; let her figure it out herself.

"Well, it's voice was slow and patient, and it was like it was talking to me from all directions at once. The illusion itself was more like a bunch of gray shimmers that only barely could be defined as a dragon, but that's definitely what it was" Amanthe put rubbed her chin, going _hmmm_. Finally she gave up. I let my wings relax, them rising up a little.

"Guess we'll have to wait and see, won't-" She yawned. "-we" She then realized she was leaning up on me and was up in an instant. "Oh I am SO sorry" I grinned and whipped my tail out and tripped her. I extended my right wing and draped it over her, pulling her back in with it. I curled myself around her, pushing my head at her ribs.

"Amanthe, you're my friend, relax will you?" She took a deep breath and rubbed a hand along my scales.

"Alright. Think, think I can sleep here tonight?"

"Sure" Amanthe closed her eyes.

"Selriona, I, I just want to say, I trust you. It's good to have someone to talk to other than my brother. Good night" I laid my head down.

"Good night" I closed my eyes. I had a friend now. Maybe that's why the illusion had sent me to Stormwind? To have a friend after my old life ended. To help me get through losing Verthelion...

Maybe even to help me find him.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**I don't know ANYTHING about how you actually hunt, I made up all that on the spot. Feel free to point out mistakes.  
><strong>


	11. Chapter 11:Sick

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>Weeks passed.<p>

I didn't leave the illusion once afterward. I went each day to the Scribe of Stormwind and did the same boring nine hour repetitive thing. I kept a lookout for the blood elf Jeziba, but he never showed up again. Not once. I only caught sight of him once afterward, in an alleyway, next to the bronze dragon disguised as a gnome. They were looking at a strip of parchment -I noticed it was the one Jeziba bought- scrawled along the middle with a straight line, with other lines projecting off of it, leading to blocks of writing. I had no clue.

I slowly and steadily felt worse. Well, not exactly worse, but more jumpy. At first it was merely Amanthe struggling to keep up with my pace when we went out of Stormwind to practice her hunting, but eventually I kept shifting on my feet, pacing, fidgeting while I sat. I even woke up one night to find that I had literally walked out of my bed, down the stairs, and regained consciousness while I was pacing the kitchen floor, in my sleep. My speech slowly sped up, to being nearly twice as fast as before. I didn't know what was happening to me. Amanthe didn't either, and when I asked Samuel he said he was too busy studying for his CCSPPC exam, or 'Cones, Cylinders, Spheres, Prisms and Pyramids of Cold'.

"Go away, Selria. Unless you want to help me by being a target dummy..."

"Nothank you"

Amanthe decided that I simply had too much energy pent up and I should run. I did. I ran all the way to Goldshire and back, but nothing happened to my pent up energy. Well, that would be a lie. It actually seemed to increase.

Amanthe got better and better at hunting. One day, during the Pilgrim's bounty festival that I refused to take part in, just like all the others, I watched Amanthe stalk towards a doe and fawn from the tree tops. I could hardly contain my energy, I almost shook the trees and scared them away. Amanthe was hiding in a bush, covering her smell. She put her hands together and muttered a quick few words, and a flash of yellow light exploded around the fawn. It fell dead in an instant and the doe jumped away into the woods. I dropped down onto the ground next to the fawn, listening for any signs of life.

None.

"Amanthe,youcancomeoutnow!" She stepped out with a shocked look on her face, stuck like a mask.

"I, I actually did it"

"Yeah,congratulations"

"Should I feel sad?"

"Oh,no,theirthoughtcomplexesaren'tanymorecomplexthan'hungry-eat-night-sleep.'.Probablynoteventhatadvanced,theydon'texactlyhavealanguage..." I trailed off, pushing my weight off each foot onto the other, bouncing slightly without actually being airborne. Amanthe walked up to the deer, a grin slowly attaching itself to her face.

"Well, now what?"

"Nowwegoteachyouhowtocookit" She paused for a moment to decipher my speech.

"Seriously? Have you ever had to cook... anything before?"

"No,buthowhardcanitbe?"

"There are books, in the Stormwind Library, about how to do that. I'll check one out and read that"

"Iguessthatworks,letstakethatwithus'". I gestured to the fawn's body.

"Um, alright. I guess, but where should I put it so it doesn't, well, rot?" I thought.

"Goodpoint,leaveithere,"

"Are you implying something?"

"Amanthe,I'malreadyunabletostopmoving,Idon'tneedtoeat,givingmeeven_more_energy" I was bouncing up and down quickly now.

"True, true. Let's get moving back to Stormwind before you explode"

"Goodidea" I started on my way back to Stormwind, running, no, _sprinting_ as fast as I could. I sprinted the entire three kilometers back into the gates when I stopped to wait for Amanthe. Nothing, I wasn't a bit tired. I decided to sit on the ground and wait for her to get back, but in seconds I found myself running circuits in between the walls, kicking off of one into the air, twisting my body midair and hitting the ground running to the other. About twenty minutes later when she showed up, I still was not tired.

"You need to pace yourself, Selriona. Even if you don't feel tired, you're body is going to be worn out. I don't think you'll be able to take much more" I sighed.

"You'rerightbutIcan'tstaystill!Ijustcan't!"

"Well then it might be a good idea to find out how. Come on, I'm going to the Cone of Cold in the Mage Quarter, Samuel just got a job there"

"Okay,'?"

"It is, but it's also the name of a new shop in the place"

"Oh,okaylet'sgo" I bounded off when she called my fake name.

"Selria!" I skidded to a stop, shifting my weight repeatedly. I had to keep moving. If I didn't I got this sort of... itch. "Slow down, alright? You don't know where it is, and I don't have that sort of boundless energy you do"

'Rightright,slowingdown" I forced myself to remain at Amanthe's side the whole way to the Cone of Cold. As we turned into a deserted alley in the Mage Quarter, she asked me a question that sent me flailing.

"So, did you have any friends, at the Bastion?" I stopped dead in my tracks. I sighed.

"Yeah,Fuluthlion,Asteriona,Verthe-" I stopped myself. "Just,let'sjustkeepwalking" Amanthe did, but she kept talking.

"You were about to say something. Verthe, who?"

"He'snobody" Of course, he wasn't. He was my best friend, my destined mate, my shadow practically. I missed him, but I had no way of knowing where he was. I was looking for a, what's the term mortals use? Needle in a haystack.

"So, your friends, how are they?" My eyes drooped. My throat was so dry it felt like sand, but I forced out the words anyway, my throat slowing me down to a normal pace.

"Fuluthlion and Asteriona died" Amanthe put her hand over her mouth lightly before taking it off.

"I, I'm so sorry" I sighed.

"Thanks"

"If you're alright with me asking, how did they die?" I took a deep swallow, and breathed in.

"There, there was a red dragon chained near the bastion, Lirastrasza. One of the night elves freed her, and she started attacking my patrol. Fuluthlion and Asteriona were both on it, they both died. She very nearly killed me, too. V- my destined mate thinks I'm dead" I felt a tear forming in my eye, and I quickly dabbed at it. What was that? I wouldn't have teared up so easily before coming to Stormwind. Was being around mortals for so long starting to influence me? Or was it just Amanthe? Was it really a problem? I swallowed again, this time clearing my throat and removing my speech restriction, which in all honestly, was just making me talk at a normal pace. "Let'sjustgototheConeofCold" Amanthe nodded and led me through the quarter.

The Cone of Cold was a simple set up as human stores went. There were buckets of various foods around, fruits, milk, this weird brown stuff cold chocolate, some of it dumped into a container and beset on all sides by mages channeling frost spells over it, chilling it to incredibly low temperatures. Another one would stand infront, and take money and requests before venturing through into the middle of the blizzard and taking out one of the solidified foods and giving it. A lot of the people here were human whelps, eating the cold foods. I noticed Samuel was one of the mages channeling frost onto the central bucket of foods. Amanthe walked up to the man administering it.

"Hello Hans"

"Hello, what would you like to buy today?"

"I would like a standard Cone of Cold, strawberry, and um, Selria?"

"Idon'tknow"

"And an Ice Cream Bar"

"Mm hmm. That'll be ten silver please" Amanthe produced ten flattened pieces of silver metal and handed it to 'Hans'. He nodded and walked over to the circle of ice and cold, pulling out two things. One was a hollow cone made of some kind of hardened bread with a weird pink... thing filling it. The other was a brown box, condensation covering every square centimeter of it. He walked over and gave it to me and Amanthe. I looked at the brown box in my hands. Amanthe was biting the pink thing on her cone.

"Whatisthis?"

"It's ice cream, try it. You're is encased in the chocolate" I shrugged, and took a bite out of the box. Immediately my senses went into overdrive. My throat made a hacking noise and I spat out the thing onto the ground.

"UGH!" Amanthe took another bite out of her Cone of Cold.

"I like it. Come on, let's get to the library so I can check out that book"

"Goodidea,let','teatmeatraw,right?"

"Shh! We're in a public place, don't say the M word! But yeah, we can't"

"Seeyouthere" I ran off through the Mage Quarter, but something happened as I turned the corner. My legs gave out from under me, my body suddenly deciding it didn't want to cooperate with me. I fell down and cracked my head on the floor.

The very next instant I was in Amanthe's house, lying on a bed somewhere. She was looking at me worried. I tried to get up and start moving, but my arms and legs refused. I could feel the extra energy in me, but I couldn't use it. I was slowed down to normal.

"What, happened?"

"Well I'm going to guess your body gave in. It was probably exhausted, but you didn't feel it somehow. Eventually your body simply didn't have anything left even though you felt like it did, and you passed out. Stay still"

"I don't have a choice in that" I was getting a slight itch in the base of my skull. I needed to _move_.

"What? Why not?"

"My arms and legs aren't moving. Look, I'll try to move them now" I focused all my attention on my limbs. _Move Move Move_. Nothing happened, no response from anything.

"I've never seen this happen before, but I'll go out on a limb and say your body's on a sort of emergency shut down. You won't be able to move" The itch in my skull had expanded to my entire head. I needed to move soon.

"Oh that's just great. And I'm getting an itch because I can't move"

"You mean the one that forces you to keep moving?"

"That one. It's getting, ach, worse"

"Well, is all your energy burned off?" I shook my head.

"No. I can still feel it bubbling under my skin, but I can't use any of it. Oh this hurts so much"

"You're probably going out of your mind aren't you?" The itch had just engulfed my neck.

"You-have-no-idea"

"Any muscle fatigue, like, feeling your muscles are tired?"

"Not a thing"

"Well, it's not like you'll be going anywhere until your body decides it's good enough. I'm going to go consult with Shaina Fuller, she knows first aid, maybe she can figure out what's going on with you. We need to find some way to burn off your energy" I nodded, then groaned in misery as the itch slowly crawled down my arms and chest, engulfing my fingers and reaching my waist. I tried to squirm, but nothing happened. It was terrifying, mainly because it reminded me of the horrible days, maybe weeks, when I laid on the ground of the Wetlands, unable to move, tendons snapped from Lirastrasza's attack, confident in every aspect I was going to die...

I shuddered the few parts of my body (my head and torso) that would listen.

"See you, Selriona. Try to sleep, it'll take your mind off the itch" I nodded and tried to do as she said. I couldn't. My whole body was buzzing in pain. The itch was slowly flowing down my lower legs. I whimpered. The pain wasn't growing, but I needed to move. It was psychologically painful in addition to the itch's physical pain. Finally, the itch engulfed my feet. It had never gotten to this stage before, ever. I hoped that it would peak out at this point.

Of course, I wasn't that lucky.

The itch steadily increased in intensity all over my body evenly. It got more and more painful. I screamed in pain as long as I could, until my lungs gave out, then I took another breath and screamed again. The itch not only seemed to be getting worse, it seemed to be seeping down through my skin, affecting my insides as well.

My body was on fire. I screamed in pain over and over again. I vaguely felt my head buzzing, but it was completely overshadowed by the itch. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I was losing my sanity. I passed out from the itch, if it could even be called that at this point.

When I woke up again, the itch was gone. But I still felt like, well, to be honest? Like crap. I opened my eyes and closed them as the light blinded me, snarling in pain. I grabbed my head. It was swimming, it felt like it was melting. Hold on, I grabbed my head? I did a mental check. Yup, I can move again. I still felt the pent up energy in me, but it wasn't... wasn't active, is the best way I can describe it. I felt sick, like my insides were being slow-roasted. I groaned again when I heard Amanthe's voice.

"OH THANK THE LIGHT, YOUR AWAKE, YOU'VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR THREE DAYS" I whimpered. The darkness behind my eyes had colors bubble quickly into and out of existence behind them at the pounding noise.

"Loud..."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" I hissed at her.

"Loud... be quiet"

"OH, I THINK YOU MAY BE NOISE SENSITIVE. HERE, I'LL TRY WHISPERING. Is this better?" I smiled.

"Much better, thank you" My body felt like it was being churned over, like Valiona was stepping on me. I thought darkly about all the pain, death and misery I had caused in the war. I deserved this. I really did. But, ugggh.

"Can you talk? How do you feel?"

"Terrible. Everything's bright, and loud, and I feel like there's pressure all around me"

"Like you're sick, with a migraine?" I groaned

"Exactly like that"

"Well, I'm guessing you're going to be here a while. Do you want to talk about whoever this 'Verthe' is?"

"Verthelion"

"Who was he?" I nearly retched as a fresh wave of nausea crashed over me. My world spun. I risked opening my eyes a crack, but nearly roared in pain when the light seemed to impale my eyes, slamming them closed again.

"He was my best friend. After Lirastrasza attacked me, he thinks I'm dead" I felt Amanthe's hand on my body... somewhere. I couldn't pinpoint the location, the world was spinning too fast. I chuckled faintly. "Out of every group of us, the strongest male and strongest female are chosen. They have their aging accelerated"

"Like you" I groaned in pain from the sickness swimming around me.

"Like me, yes. They also become destined mates for when they mature two years later"

"How is this impor- oooooh. Verthelion... he was..."

"Yes, he was" I groaned in pain. "I, I loved him. He thinks I'm dead. I don't have any way of tracking where he is" My despair temporarily pushed my sickness down, but I kept my eyes closed. "He probably asked to be transferred away from the Bastion. I have no way to find him. And even if I did, I don't know if I could get him to leave the war like I did. He doesn't know the voice lied-"

"What voice?" I nearly regurgitated again as the sickness came back up, then groaned.

"When I was in my egg, after I had... changed, I heard this voice. Each of us heard it. It told us all sorts of things, how the reds were evil, our brood-mothers abandoned us if we were from another flight like me, and gave us false information. The voice made us want to be on Deathwing's side. I'm probably the only one who knows it _lied_" I spat out that word with all the venom I could muster even in my condition.

"Maybe you could convince him" I groaned again, pulling something over my head, sealing me off from the outside world. Blankets? I was laying in bed like a normal human, under blankets? Hmm, Amanthe probably put me down into the bed like that. Assuming she was the one who picked me up after I passed out, which is incredibly likely. Which reminded me, where had the ice cream gone? Not that I wanted to eat it, but what had happened to it? I forced myself to focus.

"How could I? I'd need to find him first" My voice dropped. "Even if I did find him, did convince him to leave the war, then what? We'd still be hunted down until my flight is extinct. And I'll never even find him to begin with..." I felt a tear slide down my face as despair started to grip my heart.

"DON'T SAY THAT"

"_Loud_", I hissed at her.

"Sorry. I'm whispering right now. Are you that noise sensitive?"

"Apparently, light sensitive too"

"Okay, I'm going to find a way to treat you. I'll go find a doctor, you just lay here and rest, okay? Try to sleep" I groaned my agreement. I heard loud footsteps as Amanthe walked down the steps, leaving me to my illness and thoughts. Thinking was nauseating in my state, but I forced myself through it. I needed to do something. I forced my thoughts to Verthelion. If I could find him, I could persuade him to leave the war!

And then what? What would I do? Where would we go?

If the war was won and Deathwing ruled... then what? What would he do to the world? I'd caught glimpses of him making insane passes through the land, torching everything in his path without rhyme or reason. Would world domination really make him sane? No. Not a chance. He would continue burning up the world until nothing was left and we all, myself included, died. He would kill everything if he won.

What if he lost?

If Deathwing lost, the outcome didn't seem much better. The black flight was already down to a single brood-mother, Sintharia, but if Deathwing lost that would also mean she dies, and THAT would mean extinction for the black flight. The world throbbed around me, tinging my vision with red. I groaned again. If Deathwing lost, what would my flight do? The cultists would keep doing what they've always been doing, hiding underground and then taking the side of who or whatever wanted to destroy the world next. But my flight had nothing to do. We served Deathwing, end of discussion. If he died...

We would probably scatter to the winds.

The other flights would hunt us down, no doubt, so that we couldn't regroup and attack them. If Verthelion and I hid, we would be found eventually, and killed. This thought sent me into another round of despair. No matter what, I was going to die. I heard more footsteps and a hushed,

"She's in there, Shaina. Be quiet, she's sensitive to noise right now"

"I will" The energy in me was still bubbling over, inert, but definitely there. It was getting painful, I _needed_ a release!

"Hey there, Selria. Your friend Amanthe tells me you have too much energy?" I groaned an agreement.

"Let me just take a measurement..." I heard Shaina chant some words under her breath and a blinding light engulfed me. I flinched, and it subsided.

"I don't know. She's in some sort of withdrawal. From what, I don't know. But she's in a withdrawal" I heard Amanthe's voice come.

"Thank you, Shaina. I can handle this from here, I think I know what it is" I heard more footsteps, and Shaina walked out, her faint scent leaving with her. If I had my eyesight I probably would have noticed. I whimpered a response to Amanthe.

"Back so soon?"

"Soon? Selriona, it's been hours" Hours? So I had passed out at some point. Great. "Selriona, I think I know what the problem is, but I need to be sure. I'm going to take you off the bed and get you room. When I do, drop your illusion, ok?" I nodded. I felt Amanthe's hands go between me and the bed, lifting me up and setting me to the ground. There was a sickening moment of something I rarely felt-vertigo-where I was in the air but couldn't see, and then I was stable again. I did as Amanthe asked and let myself unfurl into my true form, laying on my sides, wings limp. Then I noticed something with my wings. They were tingling like _mad_. They weren't affected by atrophy either from not being used in all this time, apparently shape-shifting doesn't work like that. But it felt like thousands and thousands of ants were crawling all over them.

"FEEL ANYTHING?" I groaned again.

"_Loud_"

"Sorry. Feel anything?"

"My wings are tingling like crazy" The air around me seemed to be pushing in on my skull, trying to crush it.

"Okay, I think I know what it is. Change back, I have an idea" I groaned as I forced the magic through my body. It hurt so very much to do. Normally it wasn't like this, but whatever was wrong with me, it made everything more difficult. Eventually, a human female was laying on the floor. "Okay, I think I know what's wrong with you. You're in flying withdrawal, you're ground-sick. I've never heard of this before, but then again I don't, really, have any experience with it. I'm going to guess that's it" That felt like one of Valiona's meteorites to the torso. I _did_ miss flying. More than almost anything else, second only to Verthelion. I wanted to fly. I needed to fly. But where could I fly without being seen? I would be killed.

"Flying..."

"Selriona, I have an idea. Oh, on a side not while you were sleeping I read a book on how to cook deer meat. I'll be right back, try to rest, okay? After that I'll show you what I learned" I groaned in agreement, and let my eyes slam shut of their own accord.

In my dream I was soaring through the air. I didn't know where I was. I was some place high up. I flew around a huge tree and down a cliff. I had to get somewhere fast. I needed to get to someone before... before something happened soon. I dived down as fast as I could. Vague, blurry, colorless blobs danced around a giant colorless blob, which was spewing more blobs onto the smaller ones, making them drop straight down. Heat beat at me from my right, a source of fire un-matched by anything else in all of existence.

All of eternity seemed to hang on that point. The colorless shapes in front of me seemed to stay still in their dance. I heard someone scream.

"Rseay, no!" I felt like that wasn't their real name, though. A moderate sized blob smashed into a small one, throwing it out of the air. The world resumed it's course. I felt something in me wretch, a great breaking, shattering myself, breaking all things in the world...

I woke up with a startled gasp. I quickly shut my eyes again, roaring from the pain of the light. My head was still being compressed. I had so much energy in me, I felt like I was going to combust. Whatever Amanthe was planning I hoped she would hurry up. For a few minutes, hours, months, I don't know, I lost track of time, I laid on the floor, my mind blank.

I could hear the door downstairs creak open, setting ever nerve in my body on fire as it did. Two people trudged in. One I could clearly tell was Amanthe, and the other one smelled like that disgusting ice cream.

"SO AMANTHE, WHAT'S THIS ABOUT YOU NEEDING MY HELP? CAN'T DO IT ON YOUR OWN CAN YOU/ AH, NOT SURPRISED" I winced in pain. The thudding as the twins walked up the stairs made me feel like I died each time. I heard Samuel stop in his tracks when I felt his gaze move over me.

"WHAT...HAPPENED?" I heard Amanthe's voice, thick with false patience, cut through the air like a cultist ascendant through an army.

"Shh! She's sensitive to noise right now. Whisper. Samuel, I need you to open a portal to somewhere. Selria's sick, I need to take her to somewhere"

"Why? Can't you just-"

"No, I can't"

"Oh, interrupting? Tsk tsk tsk, if you're asking for my help, mind your manners, dear sister!"

"May I _please_ continue?"

"Sure, go ahead"

"She's in withdrawal. I need you to open a portal to some place high up, with lots of open space in the air, and nobody around" I heard a thick silence for a moment.

"I KNOW JUST THE PLACE" I hissed in annoyance. My poor ears...

"Quiet! She's in there" They walked in.

"Oh wow, she's really sick, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she is. Please, open the portal"

"Alright, just give me a moment to prepare a binding cantrip" I heard Samuel mutter some words underneath his breath. A smell permeated the air. It was like something had burned, but pure, unchanged, basic, primal. The closest thing I could compare it to was ozone. Then it ended with a whoosh.

"Okay, it's open"

"Where does it go?"

"A floating rock in Outland. I'll need to come along to help you come back"

"Oh... okay. Thank you, brother"

"Hey, anytime" I felt someone pick me up and toss me through something.

The world spun around me, impaling me on burning hooks carving into my flesh suspended above lava, pummeled me, hurt me. It was like those days in my red egg so very, very long ago, at the hands of the faceless, the wrong-things, hurting me, changing me. And then the pain ended.

I felt lighter. My head cleared up. I was put down on the floor. But it wasn't floor. I groaned and opened my eyes against my better judgment, expecting to be blinded. I wasn't. The purple-shell was _amazing_. There was grass under me, tickling me. I pushed my face up, looking out.

The purple-shell was a bright blue extending all around me, but the top was black. A shimmering stream of purple energy seemed to cross over the colors, dividing the world in two. Giant spherical rocks dotted with holes overlapped each other, a small blue one about a third of the size of a red one in front of it. Another had rings around it. The moons of Outland. Something like a cloud was visible, but it was a spiral, with a bright light in the center. My disorientation was slowly fading away, but the pent up energy in me was still painful. I slowly got up and half crawled, half dragged myself to the edge...

The edge? Edge of what?

I looked down and forgot how to breathe. I was on a rock like I was after I hatched and left the Bastion for the first time. There was grass all around me, covering it entirely, a layer of warm, soft dirt underneath. Clouds lazily patrolled the sky above me. One was above me, shadowing the sun, raining a very, very light mist onto me. The rock itself was maybe a kilometer above the ground, floating. There was a vast plain of grass stretching around me as far as I could see, a huge white crystal in the distance barely noticeable. I got to my feet, and took a step closer to the edge. I heard Samuel's concerned voice.

"Ah, Selria, what are you doing?" Amanthe answered him.

"Samuel, I need you to promise me something"

"Yeah sure, what?"

"Don't freak out, and don't. Tell. Anyone" I jumped off the edge.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOing-" Samuel's voice faded as the wind rushed past me. I threw my illusion off entirely. My wings unfurled from my sides, the tingling being washed away by the wind. For a moment I was worried I would forget how to fly, despite it being impossible. Still, I needed a couple of beats of my wings to reassure me that I could not forget. The ground was flying up to me at an insane speed. 800 meters. 500 meters. 200 meters, now! I pulled up as sharply as I could, my stomach passing right over the grass on the bottom, scraping the sensitive skin lightly. I pulled up further, making a loop in midair.

The air rushed past my face so fast I thought scales would peel off. I opened my mouth and let it flow into my mouth. I angled myself up and shot straight up, beating my wings to make it. I came back up to the rock, and twisted around so that I was looking at Amanthe and Samuel. If there was ground under me, it would have looked like I was standing on my hind legs, my tail hanging down, my wings spread out to the sides. Samuel yelped and backed up. Amanthe was just looking at me in awe. I smiled and flipped myself back, spinning parallel to the ground. I brought flames into my crop and blew them out in a steady stream as I went, just because I could.

I flew around, diving, spinning around, doing loops, while I vaguely heard but didn't listen to Amanthe explaining everything to Samuel. I could feel my excess energy burning up, draining away, but I probably had several hours left in me. I laughed.

"Oh I never want to land!"

And it was true, I didn't. I didn't even realize how much I missed the sky until I was back in it. I flew up as far as I could, into the clouds above the floating rock. I hid there for a while, hovering, and I got an idea. I dove straight down to the island where Amanthe and Samuel were. The wind screeched, a banshee scream seeming to rip from my wings. I watched Samuel look up and throw himself away. I laughed as I pulled up out of my nosedive, spinning around like I was laying on my back, smirking at Samuel. He waved back at me, and collapsed in a heap.

I laughed again.

I didn't care how long I was there. The sun was setting in the sky and I still had tons of energy to spare. Amanthe and Samuel were both sleeping next to each other, but I didn't care. I dove over herds of Clefthoof. I wondered what they tasted like, but I didn't care enough to stop flying. I let let myself go parallel to the ground kilometers above, nearly touching the clouds, and dropped myself like a stone. I brought flames up and spat fireballs at random directions in the sky, completely random places, and got my descent under control, slinging myself upward, using gravity's momentum to power myself up.

A warm thermal rose up, rare at night, making it even more delightful. I let myself hover, spreading my wings out as far as they could go, a huge updraft combining with the thermal to keep me suspended without me having to do anything. I looked down at the world below me, reveling in the feeling of weightlessness. I grinned to myself. Nothing else existed. Stormwind, Amanthe, Samuel, the war, the bronze dragon, Verthelion, none of it was real. All that was real was me and the vast plains of sky.

I had never had such a natural high in my life. I flapped my wings several more times, heading upward to the rock. No doubt they would be sore in the morning, but right now I had enough residual energy left to get up there. I flopped down on the rock. Samuel and Amanthe had rolled next to each other and were sleeping back to back. My remaining energy, brought from a few months of not flying, ran out. I nearly collapsed then and there. I had no excess energy. I wasn't jumpy. I could stay still without an itch. I wasn't ill. I was cured.

I let out a hysterical laugh again, slowly gliding down from my euphoria. I brought all of my remaining flames up and sprayed them into the sky, lighting up the night briefly. Now I understood that saying I had overheard from paladins and cultists who used to be paladins- Light really does burn brightest in the dark. I fell asleep, and dreamed about an eternal flight, never tiring, never sleeping, just being in the air for all time.

I woke up feeling better than I had in a long time. I rolled myself over onto my back, breathing in the fresh, somewhat sharp scent of grass. I heard Amanthe's voice.

"Hey, are you feeling better?" I grinned.

"Worlds better" I rolled over and got to my feet, opening my mouth wide to yawn. Titans damn it, that was the exact moment Samuel chose to wake up, and looked at my gaping mouth opened towards him. He promptly passed out again. Me and Amanthe looked at each other for a good long time and broke into laughter. I collapsed, rolling on my sides, getting grass stuck beneath my scales. Amanthe was on her back, holding her sides like she was afraid they would fall apart. When we finally got our breaths back, we both stood up. I walked over to her and wrapped my wings around her, pulling her into a sort of hug.

"So, did you explain everything to him?" I let her go.

"Oh yeah, I did, but he's stubborn. You'll probably have to knock some sense into him when he wakes up, provided he doesn't pass right out again. You might want to, um..."

"Oh, right, yes" I shrunk down to my mortal form. Samuel started to stir in his sleep.

"N-no. Go... away...pyramid...of...cold...", he muttered. He opened his eyes, blinking a bit. "Where am I? Oh yeah, I..." He looked at me. "AH!" He was up on his feet in an instant. "G-get away from me! Shit, shit shit"

"Now Samuel, calm down. Let me explain things" I took a step to him, and a bolt of ice shot over my head, me barely ducking under it. "Easy!" Samuel's eyes darted around between me, Amanthe, and the kilometer long drop to the ground below.

"Would someone care to explain to me what the hells is going on here?"

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. <strong>


	12. Chapter 12:Pursued

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>"Samuel, calm down" I held my hands out and pushed the air down, trying to calm Samuel as I took a step closer to him, but he just took a step back, closer to the edge of the rock. His eyes were darting back and forth, and I didn't like the look in his eyes. He looked downright insane, his eyes darting around, narrowed, shifty, like he was going to do something drastic at any second.<p>

"W-what do you want with me?"

"I just want you to calm down and let me explain" I took another step forward, and he took another one back.

"Explain? Explain? Okay, start here. What are you doing in Stormwind?"

"To be honest? I don't know. Some... thing told me to come here and that things would work out"

"You expect me to believe you?"

"I would hope you did, it's the truth" I took another step forward, and Samuel stumbled. He looked over his shoulders and was horrified at the huge drop I had unintentionally backed him up against.

"You're lying! What've you done with my sister?"

"I haven't done anything to her" His face widened in shock.

"Oh no... Amanthe, how could you?" The tone in his voice made Amanthe's head snap up. Her mouth quivered slightly as she spoke.

"How could I what?"

"Join the blasted Twilight's hammer cult! That's what! Why else would you let _that_" He pointed to me."willingly into your house? Huh?" I growled under my throat.

"Her"

"I'm not in the cult! She saved my life when the-"

"Shut up! You're all liars!" He turned back to me, his face slowly going from horror and shock to anger. "To think, to think I _helped_ you! Well, you're not getting back. I already closed the portal, and none of you know how to make it. Outland will eat you alive" Amanthe started walking towards her twin.

"Samuel, you can't be serious! Think about this..."

"No, YOU think about it! Why would you _want_ to destroy the _world_?"

"I don't! You're not listening to a thing I'm saying!"

"Why should I listen to a damn Twilight cultist?"

"I'm not a cultist!" Amanthe's voice was starting to rise. "If you would stop panicking you would know that! Please, just, open a portal back!"

"No, I won't! I'm leaving you here, one less cultist and one less drake. I'm teleporting out of here" Samuel put his hands together, small sparks of blue energy forming along them. They coalesced and started to grow. I did the only thing that came to mind. I jumped at him.

"No!" He interrupted his spell and whispered a word under his breath. An explosion of heat and light hit me in the chest, and the flames blasted me back a meter from him. But the force of the spell had pushed him back. Samuel stumbled, bending backward from the rock, his head hanging over the air. For a moment me and Amanthe were too stunned to react as he spun his arms in circles, trying to balance himself, a look of sheer terror on his face, his eyes wide as plates. Samuel failed at balancing himself, and he fell off. Amanthe screaming his name brought me back to reality. I jumped straight off the rock, after him.

The air whistled past my ears as I let my illusion fade once again. I heard Samuel's constant screaming. He was spinning around in the air around and around, trying in vain to right himself. I flapped my wings against the air, trying to fall faster than Samuel. I was falling faster, but only just. I was going to be fast to make it. My wings were screaming in agony from their exertion last night, but I pushed through it. I dove straight down, gaining on Samuel. I was three meters from him, and we had fallen halfway down, Outland's low gravity helping me close the gap. But it was still slow going. Samuel twisted around and got a look at me. He yelped and flapped his arms, trying to actually fall faster. I growled at him. He was almost in my grasp now.

I strained my head out as far as it would go. I opened my mouth and snapped down on the back of his shirt. He yelped, and I spread my wings out to slow the fall. I flapped them down, again and again, straining to slow down as fast as possible. The ground was approaching dangerously fast. 200 meters. 125 meters. 75 meters... I slowed to a stop just a third of a meter above the ground, and panted. Only then did I notice Samuel was still screaming. I angled myself and started back up towards the rock. I moved Samuel out of dangling from my mouth into my hind legs and started flying up, making a large spiral around the sky to ascend.

I hurled myself up onto the rock, scrambling for purchase on the edge. Amanthe ran over to me and grabbed my front legs and started pulling back as hard as she could, but I was too heavy for her, and she just pulled herself to the edge, leaving a trail of dirt behind her. I beat my wings, a fresh stab of pain tearing through them each time, slowly moving up. I unceremoniously dropped Samuel onto the ground. I flopped down on my stomach, panting, folding my wings up against my back to rest them. Immediately the mage got up and backed up from me. He stumbled, and fell down. Amanthe knelt down next to me and placed her hands on my side, rubbing them in circles, yellow light flowing out from them. The light warmed me up, seeping down into my scales. The warmth spread up my wings, and when I stretched them out, they didn't hurt.

"Thank you, Amanthe" I looked back up at Samuel, who was beginning the teleportation again. I took a small breath and fired a tiny (Tiny!) fireball at him, hitting him in the chest. It didn't burn him or anything, just interrupted his spell, and knocked him down.

"Honestly, Samuel? After I just saved your life, you're still going to try to abandon us here?" His face became beet red.

"Your still the enemy, I can't let you back to Stormwind. Why did you even need to come here in the first place?"

"I was, Amanthe, what's the word you used?" I pivoted my head to look at her, still healing my exhaustion.

"Ground sick"

"Ah right, I was that" I got up onto my feet, and Samuel backed up again, falling. I sat down on my haunches. My stomach growled, reminding me that I had previously passed out for three days with no food. "Amanthe, I'm going to go hunt. Think you can keep him from abandoning us here?"

"Well, I have a spell that would do the trick" Samuel threw his hands in the air.

"Seriously, sis? Seriously?"

"Bye" I dove down the rock, gliding down to the surface, and turning once I spied a pack of clefthoofs. I spotted one smaller than the others, it's brown fur hanging down in mats, it's huge head equipped with a mouth filled with flat teeth too big to allow it the simple pleasure of closing it's mouth. It stomped awkwardly after it's mother. Even if it was small, it was easily half a dragon's size. The low gravity of Outland seemed to allow things to grow bigger. Even the grass was up to my head.

I flew around, waiting for the young animal to tire, and separate from it's roaming herd. Eventually it did just that, and I wasted no time. I dove down at it, fast as thought, and landing on it's back, digging my claws into the flesh as hard as I could. It... bleated... in pain, thrashing around, trying to dislodge me. The rest of the herd turned around, and when they saw me latched onto it's back, 'charged' at me. They weren't all that fast though. I tried to bite through the, the... what do you call a young clefthoof? Oh hells, I'll call it a foal. I tried to bite through the foal's skin, but was met with rock hard spine bone. I recoiled, and in my surprise at it's bone being so tough, was tossed off of it.

I righted myself in mid-air and skidded a short distance along the dirt, before launching myself at the foal's face. I scratched at it and it bleated in panic, trying to shake me off with no success. I could smell it's blood in the air, from the injuries on it's head and it's back, but I wasn't doing any notable damage. I looked to my left to see one of the other clefthoof, an adult the size of a dragon, charging it's head at me. I took off, hovering a short distance above them. I brought fire into my crop, but I messed up. I brought them up too fast and they spilled over into my throat, and I choked on them as they burned my throat from the inside. I would have to wait a few minutes before I could do that again.

Alright then. I can improvise.

I soared higher and higher up, the herd fading to a small speck under me. The clefthoof that had forced me off, probably the foal's mother, was licking it's scars. That was my cue. I dove down, and slammed my claws straight down onto the foal's head, stopping at it's thick skull, my momentum forcing it to the ground, stunned from the concussion. I wasted no time in the herd's shock. I jumped down and dove at the now-lowered flanks, tearing into them. Like I had assumed, the large muscle mass of the foal meant it's ribcage was pushed further in, so I could rip and tear at it's sides and make it bleed out without being hindered by the elementium-tough bones. I ripped through muscle and sinew, then when the mother tried to crush me by dropping her head on me, I flew to the other side and repeated the process.

The unfortunate foal bleated in pain, but I needed to eat. I flew off, and watched the ground around it slowly redden. The foal collapsed, it's mother walking over to it, nuzzling it's head. Maybe they weren't sentient, but they could still feel emotions. The mother turned, leaving the foal. It had no chance. It's injuries were too great, it would bleed out no matter what they did. I settled down next to it. The mother moaned, and rejoined it's herd. The foal bleated after them sorrowfully, begging for them to come back.

I winced in empathy. The least I could do was end it's misery.

I trotted over to the foal, not daring to meet it's eyes. It's bleats were getting quieter, more tired, as its blood ran out. I stepped over to its head, which it now seemed to weak to lift. I lowered my head onto it and rubbed against it, making the foal open it's mouth in surprise. I wasted no time in launching a fireball into it's mouth, incinerating it's brain instantly as the fireball exploded its skull from inside.

I ate from the clefthoof's flanks. The meat was chewy and tasteless, but that wasn't what I was focusing on. It had hurt me so much when the mother left the foal. Why? It had never affected me like that before when I hunted. Had living in Stormwind really changed me so much? I had much more empathy than did me good. Maybe that's why I was sent there? Would that become helpful later? I finished filling my stomach and crop, and flew back up to the floating island where Amanthe and Samuel rested. I flew down and shrunk into my mortal form again, this time my clothes were the purple robes that I wore when I first used the illusion.

The air was hot and sticky, and already clouds were piling high up. One blotted out the sun above us. Samuel walked over to me.

"You have blood on your mouth"

"Oh" I wiped it off.

"Amanthe told me everything that happened while you were hunting. I guess... I don't really have a choice, do I?" He pointed to a distortion of light behind me.

"There's the portal" I walked over to the portal.

"Thanks, Samuel"I waved my hand through the shimmer, and some force seemed to grab me and throw me through it. I emerged in Amanthe's house, exactly where I had left. I got up, only to have Amanthe and Samuel crash into me from behind. I groaned as they both flattened me.

"Get-off-of-me" They rolled off. "Gah! Thank you" I got up and swept off my robes. Samuel started to walk for the door.

"Now if you EXCUSE me, I have a Pilgrim's bounty feast to get to. Amanthe, are you coming?"

"Sure. Selriona?" Samuel raised an eyebrow.

"Selriona?" Amanthe coughed a little.

"Oh, that's right, I forgot to tell you. That's her actual name, but call her Selria when we're in a public place" He nodded his head.

"Go-o-ot it"

"So, are you coming?" I shook my head.

"I'll pass. I have to digest the clefthoof" Amanthe shrugged.

"Alright then" The siblings walked out, Samuel making sure to keep an eye on Amanthe. When they were out, I allowed myself to smack myself in the face and chastise myself.

"YOU IDIOT! Three people can't keep a secret like yours!"

* * *

><p>The following weeks went nicely. The weather got steadily colder and snow started to dust the ground, making it impossible for Amanthe to practice hunting, much to her delight. I found a use for the money I got from the Scribe of Stormwind; to indirectly fight ground sickness. I would buy the portal rune for Samuel, and he would transport me to Nagrand for some time to fly. The runes, of course, weren't cheap. I could only fly once a week, but it was enough to stave off any serious flight withdrawal. The real surprise came when Amanthe asked me THIS question.<p>

"What are your plans for the Feast of Winter Veil?"

"The what?"

"The Feast of Winter Veil. It's right around the corner, what are your plans for it?"

"Stay out of it"

"Oh come on, Selriona. You've stayed out of every holiday so far, you need to at least celebrate _this_ one, if none of the others" I looked up at her, and away from the book on history I was studying, for purposes related to a CERTAIN bronze dragon following me. It was on the recent developments of dwarven politics. I failed to see how it might relate to me, but I wasn't going to take chances.

"Why? What's so special about this one that makes it any different from all the others?"

"Well, it's a story from the dwarves, that there used to be a supernatural being on Azeroth, and that winter itself was his cloak, and wherever he tread late in the year would be incrusted with ice and snow. He would provide bounty to all who reveled in his season, to make up for the loss of food from the cold. People would get together and feast as they welcomed Great-father winter. Of course, the goblins took advantage of this and commercialized the whole thing-"

"Which is exactly what makes it no different than the others" Amanthe glared at me. "Sorry, sorry, continue"

"As I was saying, the goblins commercialized the whole thing, but not a lot of people buy into it. They mostly direct it towards children. But the rest of us still get together and get each other gifts"

"I'm not doing it"

"Seriously, Selriona. It's fun, you'll love it"

"Oh I highly doubt I'll enjoy ANYTHING related to winter. Cold blooded, remember?"

"But you aren't right now, are you?" I waved the argument off.

"Doesn't mean anything"

"Fine, do whatever you want. I'm still getting you something, whether you want me to or not" I sighed.

"Do whatever you want. I'm going to the Scribe of Stormwind" I walked outside, shifting my scales that the illusion had turned to clothing into a fur coat and stepped outside. Snow fell heavily from the sky, and there was a light dusting of the stuff on the floor. I made a face. Disgusting stuff. I made my way over to the inscription store. When I got inside my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

The shop was laced with red ribbons around the ceilings, white snowflake cut-outs of parchments they sold, fake reindeer hanging by strings from the ceiling. I forced the bile in my throat down and approached Catarina.

"What-is-all-this" She smiled back.

"The Feast of Winter Veil is in three days, we're making preparations" I swatted a parchment snowflake out of my way.

"This is disgusting. Honestly. I'm going to regurgitate looking at all this" Catarina rolled her eyes before delivering her sarcasm, complete with arm-swing.

"That's the spirit, Selria! So, are you getting anything for anyone?"

"I'm not celebrating this titan damned festival of snow"

"It's not a festival of snow, it's about... it's about..." Catarina trailed off.

"Exactly my point"

"It's about giving presents to each other, giving and receiving!"

"And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the goblins came up with that part, didn't they?" Catarina opened and closed her mouth several times without noise. I smirked and got behind the table, ready to begin another long, long nine hours. "I thought so"

The job passed uneventfully. I got the pieces of flattened metal, the money, and set out, wincing in disgust at all the snow around me. I looked around. Nobody nearby. I tossed a blue fireball at one particularly disgusting pile of snow, turning it to a pile of slush. I raised my smoking hand to my mouth and blew the smoke off. I was getting better at controlling my flame in a mortal form. I remembered that the first time, all I could do was briefly light parts of myself up. Now I could throw fireballs. I walked along, my feet leaving distinct marks in the snowfall. I shivered in utter repulsion. I made a note to get to the Trade District as fast as possible, the body heat of the people there would help melt snow.

I turned on the Canals and I saw a human whelp, a male, run up to me with a piece of parchment in his hand. He ran right up to me.

"Hey! Hey, are you..." He read the paper briefly. "Selria?" I was quite taken aback by this.

"Um, yes, of course"

"Someone told me to give this to you. Paid me a gold. Here you go" What? Who would want to give me a message? Couldn't they simply walk up to me themselves? I took the letter, but I was just looking straight ahead.

"Thank you" I walked ducked under an arch and started reading the letter. It was short. Extremely short, not twenty words. It was written in a gray ink, metal gray, with streaks of silver breaking through in some spaces.

_~Selria_

_Best to enjoy the winter festivities while you can. You may not be able to do so forever._

_-E.H._

I put the letter down. E.H. Those were their initials. But why couldn't they simply come find me themselves? And was that about not being able to do so forever? Were they implying that I was going to... die? Still, it made a good point. At any time I might be found out, and I would probably die. I should enjoy this while I still could. No matter how utterly pointless it was, and how very much I hated anything that celebrated cold. Still, I would have to keep a lookout for an E.H. I turned down into the Trade District. Okay, so, first order of business. What I was going to the Trade District for in the first place. Which was to look out for what the hells this festival was doing this early.

Said district was unrecognizable. Red and white had all but replaced the standard blue. Goblins were working all over on the rooftops, hammering more streams of red and white onto it, while hoards of people milled about, collecting the snow, selling them as 'snow-cones'. Simply revolting. Why would you _eat_ snow? One stand in particular made me interested. I was almost drawn there. There wasn't anyone else there.

It was a simple stand of wood, only the planks had a metallic luster to them. There was a single man standing there in warm fur silver robes covering him head to toe. His skin was a very dark brown, and seemed almost to shine, as was his hair. He had several scars though, looking like cracks in his skin, and these scars were white. He smiled as he saw me approaching.

"Ah, what would you like to buy from my collection (**collection**)?" I did a double take. The end of his sentence seemed to echo, like it were in slow motion, without him moving his mouth. It was faint, but it was there.

"I'm sorry, what collection?" He spread his arms out, and I noticed all sorts of objects that weren't there before. I found my eyes glued to them, hanging on the man's every word.

"Encyclopedias (**pedias**). Books of history, titans, magic, gods, powers, demons, dragons(**dragons**), essentially all of recorded history in them (**them**)" I shook my head from the hypnotic trance I seemed to be under. The man smiled.

"I'm sorry, I'm only browsing" The man's silver eyes drew me in again, making me ask a stupid question almost not of my own will. "What's your name?"

"My name(**name**)? Edward Hillingston, a pleasure(**pleasure**)" A human whelp ran up, the same one that had given me the letter.

"Mister, I gave her the letter" He turned around and saw me. "Oh, there you are! You know him, uh, Selria?" At the mention of my name Edward smiled widely.

"Oh, no, she doesn't know me(**me**)" I forced myself out of the spell again, this time determined to not be caught again. Edward moved his hand towards me, but as he was halfway across, he flinched, pulling back. I could have sworn I saw a gold spark on his hand "Blast her(**her**)", he mumbled under his breath. He looked up at me and smiled. "Ah, would you like the collection(**collection**)? You've come just in time, you know(**know**). Free of charge, for the season(**season**)" I looked at the books. Essentially all of recorded history. Knowledge was power. With that sort of knowledge...

"Thank you, I'll take them" Edward reached down and grabbed the books, giving them to me. I buckled a little under their weight, but held them up.

"There you go(**go**)" I nodded and turned around, heading for Old Town to get out of the snow. I shivered at Edward's echoing voice. That was usually a bad sign. And what was that hypnotic spell he had put on me? It made me forget all else and...

He knew my name.

Titans blast it, first that elf Jeziba knew my name from nowhere, now Edward does too? Why had he sent me that letter in the first place? How had he known that I wasn't going to celebrate the feast? Why was his voice echoing in the first place? I turned down the canals, my legs tiring from the weight of the books, which seemed to be growing heavier and heavier. Why was there nobody else at the man's shop? All the others were filled to capacity, his was abandoned. Was there a reason? The books seemed to be growing warmer in my hands as I turned into Old town.

Echoing voice. Knew my name. Nobody at his shop.

Nobody at his shop.

Nobody.

NOBODY.

I turned around and sprinted for the Canals, throwing the books into it. As I hurled in the last one, it caught fire in the air briefly before sinking. I stumbled back, turning and running for Old Town. The books were traps. Edward had meant to kill me. He had told me, essentially, to celebrate the feast of winter veil, but now there was NO way I was going to do that. He likely had another trap planned for me there. I shivered. Why did he want to kill me? What was his motive?

Did he know? Impossible, he couldn't have found out. Samuel trusted me, marginally, he wouldn't have betrayed me. No way Amanthe would have. So why did he want to kill me? I walked into Amanthe's house, closing the door behind me. I shivered from the cold, igniting my hands for a small time to warm myself up. I settled to my history book again, and started reading, combing for the slightest detail which may help me. I sighed, closing it. Nothing. I ate some clefthoof meat I had brought back from my voyages to Outland, and ate it to fill my stomach. Interesting. I could eat as little as a mortal in this form, shift to my real form, and it was like I ate enough for that form too. Very useful.

I sighed, and allowed my thoughts to drift lazily across my mind. I stopped when I found one that was interesting. Might I be able to get the guards after Edward? He knew something, I was confident of that. He wanted to kill me though, so maybe I could get the Stormwind guards to kill him for me. If I killed him, it would look... bad. Grinning, I stepped outside Amanthe's house and started down the paths of Old Town. I was in the heart of it when I heard a _psst_.

I stopped.

Immediately someone stepped out into my path. It was a human, male, a head taller than me. That was all I could tell, because he was dressed completely in black, a black mask over his face.

"Your money or your life" I gave him a blank stare. This seemed to anger him. "What, you stupid? Give me all your money, or you die" Oh, that's what he was. A thief. The embodiment of the state of nature; you only own something if you have the strength to keep it. Two more stepped out, one behind me, one at his side. I sighed impatiently.

"I don't have time for this" I raised one hand towards him and the other hand towards the thief behind me, and let a sheet of twilight flame shoot out from each. They both dropped screaming to the ground. The other one looked at the two spinning around, burning to ashes, and ran. I nailed him with a fireball, causing the same effect. I stepped across, between the ashes, trying to suppress the horror welling up in me. Suddenly, I was back on the floor of the Wetlands, wondering if everyone I had killed had friends...

I pulled myself out, back to the present. If only I had just ran, or intimidated them... No. No sense wishing about it now. I sighed, swallowing my conscious, and walked to the Trade District. When I got there, Edward was nowhere to be seen. Just, gone. Not a trace. He couldn't have uprooted the thing that fast. I pulled out the letter. It crumbled in my hand, turning to dust and blowing away in the wind. I did the only rational thing.

I ran back.

* * *

><p>I struggled about in my sleep. I was only half aware of my body curled up in my makeshift nest, the other half of my mind was in a grassy place, iron chains criss-crossing my true form, pinning me to the ground. I felt I had to get out, even more so than usual. But the harder I struggled, the tighter the chains pulled, cutting into my scales...<p>

I woke up with a strangled gasp, curling up tighter. I opened my eyes, groaning, shaking off the residual terror. It felt so real...

I walked down, practically gliding down the stairs I had now learned to walk across. I nearly blasted a fireball when I saw what the HELLS Amanthe had done to her house. Long story short, she'd given it the Winter Veil treatment. I groaned and stumbled, catching myself on a wall. Amanthe came down the stairs, smiling at me.

"What? The twilight drake can't handle red and white parchment?" I growled at her.

"Shut up. You know how nauseating this thing is for me" She smirked.

"Well, then I wouldn't go outside, if I were you. You might throw up"

"What?" I walked to the door and pushed it open. The world around me had been replaced with a flurry of red, white, and pine trees. Almost immediately I regurgitated the few fluids in my stomach onto the ground. I groaned and stumbled back in. My right eye twitched. "I hate you _so_ much, Amanthe" She laughed lightly.

"What are friends for?"

"I need something to drink" She reached for a cup and poured some frothy liquid into it that looked disturbingly like the ale I tried in Kharanos. I grabbed the cup and raised it nervously to my mouth and let the fluid in. I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting ale, but I got something completely different. Sweet and light, it tasted marginally better than stag. I drank the cool liquid down in a few gulps. "What was that?"

"Eggnog, a special drink for the occasion" I snapped my head around to look at her. She only shook her head and chuckled.

"You're like the Abominable Greench. Come on, I want to show you something"

"Does it have anything to do with the Feast of Winter Veil?"

"What else?"

"I'm not going"

"Oh ho, yes you are" I looked at Amanthe, tiny shadows drawing towards her hand.

"No, I'm no-" My voice screamed in my mind, 'go celebrate!'. I don't know why, but I obeyed it. "Okay, let's go" I followed Amanthe through the whirls of red, white, green and snow falling down. It seemed the entire population of Stormwind was out and about. I managed to catch a glimpse of the prince at one point. If _he_ was out, that meant this holiday really was a big deal. Amanthe led me to the Trade District.

"Stay here, I'm going to go get you your present"

"Right" Amanthe turned and walked down. I heard a voice behind me that made me freeze.

"'Tis the season(**season**), ho, ho, ho(**ho**), to be giving and receiving(**receiving**)" I whirled around. Sure enough, there was Edward, his mouth in a wide smile.

"You"

"Yes, me(**me**). How did you enjoy your little present(**present**)?" I clenched my fists.

"You tried to kill me. Don't-try it-again" He waved his hand, like he was swatting a fly.

"All part of my plan(**plan**)" I walked up to him.

"Look, I don't know who you think you are, but I'm telling you now. Back off" He smiled.

"Oh, or what(**what**)?"

"If you try anything like that again, I will kill you. You don't know what your dealing with" He smiled even wider and lowered his head to mine.

"Oh, don't I(**I**)?" He whispered. "Selriona(**Selriona**)?" My blood froze in my veins. I just stood there, gazing off into the distance, stunned, as if the mention of my name had magical power over me. Edward turned around. "Enjoy the feast, my little friend(**friend**). You won't live to see another(**another**)" He turned around, passing through the crowd, out of sight. Amanthe came back behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.

"Who was that?"

"He, he, he knows. I don't know how he found out but he knows all about me" I turned around.

"What? How?"

"I don't know, but three days ago he gave me a collection of encyclopedias. They were traps, and they caught on fire a few minutes after, good thing I had thrown them into the canal"

"He wants to kill you"

"Yes, but what I want to know is how the hells he _found out_"

"I can ask Samuel if he told anyone. He can't lie to me. Okay, so, um, here's your present" I absently let Amanthe give me a box a third of a meter on each side, covered in nauseating red paper with a green ribbon on the top.

"Thank you. Let's go find Samuel" Finding Samuel wasn't too hard. He was passed out next to a barrel of eggnog, a slight halo of the frothy drink around his mouth. I rolled my eyes. Unbelievable. Amanthe shook him awake. He got up with a 'wha? Huh?', and wiped his mouth.

"Hey, what you need, sis?"

"Did you tell anyone about Selriona?" He held up his hands, shaking his head.

"Nuh-uh, no sir" A tense silence passed over us. Amanthe groaned.

"He's telling the truth. Then how did that guy know?"

"Wait, what guy?" I answered.

"There's this man, Edward Hillingston, he knows I'm a," I looked around at the crowd passing by. "you know. He said, he said I'd better enjoy the Feast, because I won't live to see another" That really grabbed Samuel's attention. His eyes snapped up to me.

"Has he done anything yet?"

"He's tried to kill me by giving me books that burst into flames a few minutes later"

"Okay, okay, anything else?"

"Before that, he sent a male whelp to give me a letter telling me to enjoy the feast, because I might not be able to again. After the book incident, it crumbled to dust"

"Okay, well, um, do you think it's maybe possible that, I, I don't know. We'll just have to keep an eye out. He said that you won't live to see another Feast of Winter Veil, right?"

"That's right"

"Okay, that gives us another year for him to kill you. Anything else, particular?" I thought about it. There _was_ one thing that stood out.

"When he first heard my name, my fake name, he tried to reach out and touch me, but there was a little golden spark at his hand, and he said 'Blast her'. Any idea?" Amanthe thought about it.

"No, I don't. Who could 'she' be? And, wait, what were the encyclopedias about?"

"Everything, really. Magic, dragons, history, gods, all of recorded history. That's what he said, anyway"

"I don't have a clue. But we'd better keep a watch out. But for now, just relax, he won't kill you yet" Samuel gave the bad news.

"Unless that's what he WANTS you to think"

"Well, what exactly can you do, then? Selriona, you have to be careful. But, don't do anything stupid, alright? You're not alone. We can help you" Blood rushed to my face. I _hated_ having to be helped.

"Thank you. Now, since this may be the last time I can celebrate this holiday," I took a deep breath and let it out. "let's go feast" Samuel nodded, stepping back towards the barrel of eggnog.

"I second that. You two go on ahead" He eyed the barrel. "I'll catch up with you" Amanthe chuckled.

"Yes, try not to get _brain freeze_" Samuel didn't respond. As I turned around to follow Amanthe towards the feast hall, I noticed something in the alleyways. It was the bronze dragon, in gnome form, like always.

She looked absolutely terrified.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. Congratulations to whoever correctly guesses who Edward Hillingston is. I've been waiting a long time for the next chapter, I'm <em>so<em> glad to finally be there.**


	13. Chapter 13:Hunted

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>"I hate you. Truly, I despise you. I loathe you. I hate you so<em>, so <em>much, Selriona"

I pushed down a fern, the plant bending down, down, far down under my force, allowing me to step onto it, severing a few of the fibers, over it, and, showing the plant mercy, took my weight off, allowing it to snap back up and heal itself, smacking Amanthe in the face. She growled at me, shoving down the plant and walking after me.

"What are friends for?" I threw her remark from the Feast of Winter Veil back at her, and it felt sooo good. I sniffed the air, my diluted senses still stronger than a human's, picking up the scent of a drift of boars on the wind. It was faint, probably having drifted for a few miles. The weather wasn't too good either. Humid and scorching hot. Clouds were piling high into the sky, and it wasn't even noon yet, but they provided some measure of shade. It was a 'weekend', as mortals called it. It was the two-day period where I was not to go to the Scribe of Stormwind unless it was to buy something, which was an absurd notion, as the only thing I needed to buy were the portal runes for Samuel so that I wouldn't get ground sick. I held up my hand, the gesture for Amanthe to stop. I turned to her, and pointed at a sparrow perched on a tree branch.

She nodded, and smote it, the bird's corpse dropping limply down. I walked over to it, listening for the fluttering of a heartbeat. Nothing. I nodded to her.

"Okay, good job. Pick it up" She did what I told her to. "Now, how do you cook it?" She inspected the body.

"I, uh, don't know. I only know how to cook deer meat"

"Oh, that's sad" I looked up at the gathering clouds. "I've picked up the scent of a drift of boars. I don't know where or how far, though, the wind blew it around. There's your target" Amanthe groaned and started to cover herself in mud and leaves again.

"Did I ever mention" She applied another glob. "how much I really did NOT want to go hunting" _Squelch_, as she threw mud onto her back. " the moment the snow clears out?" I smirked.

"Consider it payback for you putting up the decorations"

"You celebrated the Feast of Winter's Veil and you know it!"

"Yes, because I -might- not be able to do it ever again" That instantly made the mood drop. Amanthe looked at the ground.

"We won't let that happen, Selriona. I'm your friend. Friends watch out for each other" I shivered.

"I know you'll try to help me, but what if you can't? We don't know how powerful Edward is, or what resources he has access to" I felt absolutely terrible. They said they wouldn't let me get hurt. It made me feel so small, weak, and helpless, like a whelp, or like when I was shot down by Lirastrasza. I shivered at the memory. "Just, go hunt. I've got, uh, something I need to do here"

"Are you sure? What if he wants you to stay here, so he can get you alone?"

"I'll start setting everything on fire. That's the default plan. Amanthe, I can take care of myself. Probably," I added as an afterthought. Amanthe looked at me nervously, and put a mud-covered hand on my shoulder.

"Alright. Take care" She turned around and slowly disappeared into the brush. I waited.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

I let the illusion fall off, the familiar process of my various human body parts changing to their corresponding draconic parts, and I turned around and completed my cunning and devious plan.

I ate the bird.

I swished it around in my mouth for a while, using my fangs to peel off the feathers and spit them out one by one. It was a long and difficult process. I know I could've simply used my mortal form to pick them off, but I felt like challenging myself. Eventually, after a few hours(Or minutes, I don't know), I got the feathers off. I brought a small bit of fire into my crop and opened my mouth a little, breathing a small stream of shadow-flame out, roasting the sparrow in my mouth. After chewing, I swallowed it, and after it entered my crop, I let it drop into my stomach. I nodded to myself, and turned back, lest anyone else by chance stumble on me and, oh, I don't know, try to kill me or alert the guards. I licked my tongue over my teeth, getting some of the blood off from before I roasted the bird.

I stretched my arms and legs and climbed up to the top of the trees, silently moving from branch to branch. It was almost like flying. Not quite, but enough for me to be good at it. I froze when I spotted Amanthe slowly prowling towards the boars. I saw she had re-covered herself in the surroundings to cover her smell. I didn't need to, of course. The magic of my illusion seemed to extend towards scent, something I first found out when a dog came right up to me, sniffed me, and sat there, clearly not picking up on the slight scent of a drake. I had decided to try to alter my scent to see what happens, and I chose the scent of a worg. Almost instantly the dog turned tail and ran.

So it was only natural that I allowed my scent to fade completely during the hunt. Amanthe was approaching the boars, definitely. I licked my teeth, my will power struggling against the urge to go eat the succulent, juicy...

I held my hand out below me to catch the saliva that had spilled out of my mouth. I got control back over myself. Amanthe caught them in her sights, through a bush concealing her from them. She started to charge up a blast of light.

So of course, the powers that be chose that instant to rip the sky open.

Buckets of rain buffeted everything in sight, smacking off tree leaves, pelting the boars, provoking them into running away panicked, making Amanthe stop her spell with a 'gah!', and me fall out of the trees. The force behind the rain was like a tail club to the chest. I landed next to her with a 'squelch' on the newly formed mud. The trees above were swaying back and forth as the purple-shell's forces pummeled them with raindrops the size of my individual scales. I did the natural thing in this case. I removed my illusion, sitting down on the ground. Amanthe was clearing water out of her eyes, all the mud and leaves washed off of her in seconds under the torrential downpour.

"Amanthe!", I shouted through the roar of the storm.

"What?" I stretched out a wing.

"Come here, I'll keep you dry!" She half-walked, half-crawled over to me, the rain buffeting her down to the ground again and again until her got closer. I wrapped my wing around her and pulled her in, nestling her in the crook between my wing and my sides. I shook my head, rain drops flying off, all the others simply running off my smooth, water resistant scales. Amanthe shivered, her clothing soaked, but drying off from my body temperature that I had gotten from the warm air.

"Thank you, Selriona. Aren't you getting wet?" I shrugged my wings up and down.

"Not really, the rain just rolls off of me"

"Lucky. Ugh, I'm soaked. I'm guessing we're done with hunting for today?" A flash of red light briefly illuminated the air behind the heavy, oppressive clouds. An instant later there was a deafening crack. It was worse for me, and I groaned in pain.

"Well, that depends how long this lasts" Another flash of lightning up in the clouds, the thunder making me roar in pain. I could practically feel Amanthe smirk from under my wing.

"Selriona, are you... afraid of thunder?"

"No, it's just deafening from this close"

"_I_ can handle it"

"I have better hearing than you. Not for long if this keeps up, though" Amanthe laughed and started rubbing the scales on my side.

"Whatever you say, Selriona. Whatever. You. Say" Another flash of lightning, but this time it struck the ground several kilometers off. A few seconds later a dull roll of thunder went through the air, not loud. I moved my neck around, cracking it, relieving the pressure the rain was putting on it.

"Amanthe, I'm going to lie down" I started moving. "So, um, try not to get, well, crushed" Slowly, as not to accidentally flatten my friend, I laid down on the ground, my wing still sheltering Amanthe from the rain. That was better. Much less pressure from the rain. Another flash of lightning cracked the world, striking the ground not a meter from me.

The world blew into heat all around me. A wall of air smashed into me, pain exploding from my ear-plates. The air sent me flying, smashing onto the ground a short distance from the smoking, cracked, dried mud. My ear-plates were ringing, drowning out all other sound. Amanthe made her way back over to me. I noticed I was on my back, my stomach showing, so I rolled over onto my stomach, opening my wing for Amanthe to get back under. I shook my head, slowly dissipating the ringing, letting the noise of the storm back in.

"-okay, Selriona?"

"Yes, a little deafened though" I groaned, stretching my other wing out, the one that wasn't sheltering Amanthe. "Do you feel a little burned?"

"I sure do. Damn, that was a close one. I thought lightning only hits trees!"

"So did I! Maybe there was something metal there under the ground?" I felt Amanthe shrug.

"Maybe" Small bolts of lightning started crossing my flank, making me shiver. I felt something scratching my scales where Amanthe was... oh.

"Amanthe, what are you doing?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but you're covered in soot" I looked down at my body. Oh titans she was right. I looked almost like a black drake! That would give me a scent no matter what. How would I hunt this way? More tiny electrical bolts arced through me. Not that they didn't feel good...

"The rain can take care of that" Amanthe sighed.

"Well, what are we going to do while we wait for the rain to end?"

"Well, there's not much we _can_ do except lay here and wait for it to end. After that, it's back to hunting, alright?" I waited for Amanthe's response. It came in the form of a dark word that caused me pain, like she had used so very long ago in the collapsed tram. Being in my natural form diluted it, with me being highly imbued with shadow energy, but it still hurt like someone was pouring molten lead onto me.

"Is _that_ an answer?" I tucked my head into my wing, looking at Amanthe, and fired a_ very_ small blast at her, causing her to quickly beat out the fire. "Alright, alright, you big bully" I chuckled and pulled my head back out into the pounding rain.

We lay there, watching the sky rip open, the trees bending to the point of almost snapping under the rain, fat wet raindrops pelting the ground, and the occasional flash of lightning streaking through the cloud-darkened world. There was the occasional orb of lightning which floated lazily through the tree tops high above, before exploding with a pop. And then, just as quickly as it began, the storm ended, sunlight filtering through the thinned clouds. The world was, save for copious amounts of mud, as though the storm never happened. I unfurled my wings, standing up and returning to my mortal form, letting Amanthe out.

"Thanks for keeping the rain off" I smiled at her.

"What are friends for? Now," I pointed off into the woods. "hunt, the storm scent will help conceal you" For once, Amanthe didn't complain.

She walked off into the woods, leaving me pondering the curiosity of my situation. Here I was, an infamous twilight drake, in Stormwind, making friends with a mortal not in the cult. Two if you count Samuel. I had survived, if only barely, through a miracle at that, a direct attack by a red dragon, and I had a bronze dragon stuck to me like a tick to a dog.

I chuckled at the analogy, and took to the tree tops, keeping an eye on Amanthe as she went through, hunting. It was true when I said that the storm scent would conceal her, but at the same token, it also concealed everything _else_ from _me_. It was easy to keep an eye on Amanthe, but from these heights I couldn't make out any tracks or signs. Amanthe could, however, and she almost expertly weaved her way through the woods, and vanished into the brush, away from my sight. I tried to follow her, but I couldn't see her. It was eerily quiet, like the woods were holding their breath. I caught sight of a couple animals running away from something further ahead, a little clearing. I slowly made my way over and dropped down, walking up to the clearing, pushing a branch out of the way and emerging.

What I saw made my jaw drop.

There was a portal in the middle of the clearing, it's edges tinged with bronze, it's middle a black-brown fog with a bronze spiral spinning inside, connected to the edge. As I watched the portal slowly closed itself up, but it wasn't the portal that caught my attention. Amanthe was floating several centimeters above the ground, her legs together, her arms seemingly pinned to her sides. A purple ball of magic swirled around her, keeping the spell active.

"Amanthe!" I ran towards her, only to be repulsed by an invisible barrier just as I reached her. She whimpered to me, like it was difficult to speak through the shadow prison.

"Selriona. Help..." I turned around to the portal. What I saw terrified me.

The portal was contracting, a form beginning to materialize in it, like it were a sand castle rising up of it's own accord out of the beach. I jumped backward into the brush. Maybe I could get the element of surprise. The portal dissipated, leaving a lone figure in the middle of the clearing, next to an imprisoned Amanthe. It was Edward.

"Selriona(**Selriona**)! Come out and face me(**me**)!" I stayed still. A few tense moments passed.

"Amanthe's life hangs in the balance(**balance**). Surely you care for your friend(**friend**). Surely(**Surely**), you wish to save her(**her**)..." I stepped out of hiding, facing Edward. "Ah, you're here right on _time(__**time**__)_"

"Let her go, Edward!" He simply shrugged.

"I don't need anything from her(**her**), she is bait(**bait**). It is only you who matters(**matters**). It is only YOU who must die(**die**)" I laughed, trying to sound a LOT more confident than I felt.

"You know what I am. How exactly do you plan to kill me by yourself?" I slowly let my illusion fall off, showing off each new portion of my body at a time. My wings, my claws, my tails, then my entire true form. Edward smiled wildly. A terrible thought burrowed into my brain. Oh no. He couldn't be...

"My turn now(**now**)" A pair of gigantic wings popped out from his back. They were black with an almost metallic sheen, and what looked like glowing white/silver cracks on them. He stretched them out, spanning a distance longer than mine. I slowly backed up, readying a fireball. It wouldn't attach itself to him unless he completed the transformation.

A tail popped out from behind him, the same metallic black, but completely webbed in cracks, like a window someone has cracked but hasn't yet broken. His tail-club was also black, but each individual spike was the same silvery white on it's tip. All at once he completed the transformation.

What did I think? This is what I thought:

Well, I'm screwed.

Edward was almost twice my size, his entire body webbed in those silver cracks save for his back. He flapped his wings, and flared them out, small black specks lingering in the air before they faded. I was too frozen in fear to launch my fireball. When he spoke, his echo was ten times worse. Every individual word echoed after it had been said, while he was still talking, repeating several times over, each time getting deeper, like time were slowing down for the individual word repetition.

"Now, lets(now) see(now lets), how(now lets see) will(**now** lets see, how) I (**now lets** see, how will) kill (**lets see**, how will I) you(**see, how** will I kill, **how will **I kill you **will I **kill you **I kill **you** kill you,** **you**)?" You get the idea, I'll just say what he actually said from now on, and you fill in the echoes by yourselves, alright?

"Like this" He charged at me, snapping me out of my trance, resulting in me launching my fireball at him. He simply weaved out of the way. I took to the air, flying a circle around him, pelting him with more fireballs that he managed, even with his size, to maneuver in between, closing in the distance. He slammed into me, pinning me to a tree high up, his claws splayed out over my sides, thankfully not on my stomach. I readied a breath at him, taking in air. At these distances he would be incinerated. Edward(DEFINITELY not his real name) blinked, his eyes flashing bronze for an instant. When I let my breath out, the unthinkable happened.

The shadow-flames slowed down in mid air as they got closer to Edward, stopping almost entirely just a few centimeters from his face. He smiled and backed up, dragging me with him, before throwing me to the ground. At first I fell slowly, but as the distance between me and Edward grew, I fell quicker. I caught myself in the fall and looked up to see Edward diving down at me, his mouth open. I stepped to the side slowly, and he too caught himself, looking at me. He reared up. I heard a sound like rustling leaves coming from inside his maw. Oh no.

I tried to get out of the way, but I felt like I was moving through some viscous fluid. I was too slow. My motions were slowed. I desperately raised my wings so they wouldn't be caught in the breath. Edward forced his mouth out at me, a steady stream of... sand... smashing into my flank. The slow spell broke. The sand burned, tinting the air with the same arcane-ozone smell that permeated the air whenever Samuel opened a portal. I skidded backward under the sheer force of the blast, roaring in agony. When I finally stopped, I hazarded a glance at the point of impact. All the dark blue scales had been torn off, revealing the slightly lighter blue flesh. I brought more flames into my crop.

Edward was charging at me. He had no signs of a slow spell going on. I waited for him to get closer, and breathed out the flames on him. But they still went slowly. I realized I had some of the sands still stuck to me. Edward easily danced out of the flame's trajectory.

"What's wrong, Selriona? Slowing... down... hmm?" Remember to fill in the echo with your mind, guys!

He spun around and smacked his tail-club on my face, jolting the remaining sand from my body. I moved my head in the direction the tail was moving, it would reduce the impact. It still hurt incredibly, more than it should have, a slight burning feeling with the strike. I stumbled, stunned. Edward flew back up and readied a dive bomb. I knew I should've moved out of the way. But I was still somewhat knocked out by the tail-club. Something sticky was moving down my face. Blood.

Edward was diving, his wings tucked in close, his horns poised to impale me, getting closer now with every instant. Ten meters. Five meters. I heard someone's shout from in the woods.

"Get away from her!" A blue bolt streaked through the air, catching Edward off guard as the frost bolt slammed into his wing, tearing a hole through it, and smacking him in the side. He quickly righted himself and caught the ground, only to receive another frost bolt to the face, shattering on impact. I shook myself out of my stupor and launched myself at Edward, determined to tear him apart. I landed on the larger drake's back, scratching at his larger back-scales, not breathing fire lest that prompt him to use the slow again. Looking back on it, I should've done it then.

I bit down at the scruff of his neck, making him roar in pain. He flipped his body around, trying to crush me, but I saw the trick coming, and flew off. He looked at me murderously. I heard the sound of more dry leaves rustling, deep in his crop. The clouds were darkening again.

"Struggle... as much... as you like" He got up and reared back. I readied myself for the sand breath.

I was not ready for the shadow magic.

I felt the pricks and burning tongs of shadow magic picking at my scales, trying to find a way in. I was never happier to be a twilight drake, my natural resistance to shadow magic protecting me from most of the harm, some portion of the spell forcing me to the same level as the grounded drake. In this distraction Samuel had somehow managed to free Amanthe from her prison, and they had both put up barriers, Samuel's blue, Amanthe's aegis of light on me, accelerating my motion. Edward charged at me, and I almost laughed. Amanthe's barriers had been getting stronger and stronger. Now way he could pierce it.

Just before he reached me, the bubble faded, the light seeming to flow into him. Samuel's own magical barrier flew off of him in the same manner, and Edward's full weight smashed into me, knocking the wind out of me. I was on my sides. I tried to get my head up to blast him, but Edward put his paws on my neck and flank, forcing me down. I roared in panic as Edward directed another sand breath onto my face. Samuel, stupid, stupid mage he was, teleported into the path, using his hands to shield his face, the force of the blast forcing him into me, pressing me into the mud. Edward growled, picking up the whimpering, groaning Samuel in his teeth and throwing him like a dog's frisbee into the woods.

"You are irrelevant!" He didn't get back up. Of course, this all gave Amanthe the time to finish the spell she was charging up, and a huge explosion of shadow energy engulfed Edward's head. He reared back, roaring his pain to the heavens as Amanthe continued to pull more energy, both shadow and light, out of her reserves, throwing everything she had at her former captor. Edward's eyes flashed bronze again and he zoomed in on Amanthe much, MUCH faster than should have been possible for someone of his size, batting her aside with a paw. He reared up again, flapping his wings at her with all the strength he could, buffeting her back, a claw striking her across the head like a bludgeon, knocking her out.

"Verthelion will NEVER realize the truth" I got up to my legs, shaking under the pain his previous assaults had caused me. "Selriona will die" I brought all my flames into my crop, drawing on everything I had to end this fight while he was distracted. "You have _failed_" I breathed it all out in a single straight shot at Edward, but even though his back was turned he seemed to somehow knew it was coming. He whipped himself to the side, all of my flames passing by him. A flash of lightning lit up the world, rain falling down, quenching the forest fire I may have started otherwise. Not as much rain as before, though.

I whined in despair. I had no flames left. I had put all my flames into an all-or-nothing attack, and I got nothing. I put my life in a gamble, and lost.

I froze. I mean I literally froze in place. Edward, even with the torn webbing on his left wing, took to the sky briefly and dropped down to me. I wanted to move. I tried to move. I couldn't budge at all. Nothing. Edward landed on me, forcing me to the ground, breaking the spell.

He wasn't clawing me apart like I expected. He turned himself around so that his head was above mine. I tried to force myself up, roll to the side, anything, but Edward was too strong. His head on my head, careful to avoid my horns, pressing his wings against mine, his legs danging over my flanks, Edward laid his body down on my back.

I screamed in pain, I hissed, I roared. The cracks on Edward's body weren't just for show. The ones on his stomach, on his wings, on his legs, on the bottom of his head, all burned into me with searing energy, his body crushing mine. I roared, thrashing around with desperate strength, but Edward held me down and continued to torment me with his magical flames. He rested his tail on mine, the cracks there adding to the agony. I heard him whisper into my right ear-plate as I thrashed about.

"Nobody can stop us. We will triumph, it's simply a matter of time" The cracks burned into my body, searing me. Edward brought one of his legs over to the patch of flesh where his first sand breath had removed my scales. I reared up my head, almost throwing off Edward so that I could spear him with my horns as I heard my flesh hissing. The world was in flame. The rain didn't help quench it. Amanthe and Samuel were both unconscious somewhere. Slowly my screams and roars got quieter, replaced with moans, whimpers, and whines, my struggles weaker and weaker. Colors were blending into each other, graying, losing their brightness. The pain slowly got numbed away. I was aware of somebody trekking through the woods, no, sprinting full speed. I relaxed my head. My eyes started to close of their own accord. No matter how hard I fought to keep them open, they slowly went down.

Edward roared in pain.

My body was no longer being crushed. He was thrown off my body by an invisible force, his momentum turning me onto my side, ripping my eyes open. Colors briefly returned. I wasn't burning anymore. But I hurt so, so much...

I heard Edward growl.

"Sculptor..." Out of the corner of my eye I saw that blood elf, Jeziba, moving his arms, arcane energy crackling between them, not paying the rain any mind. In the other corner I saw Edward fly back as a purple explosion rocked his form, each and every arcane blast forcing him down and back.

A flash of lightning cut through the darkness.

He growled one last time, weaker than the other times, and vanished, leaving only sand that was promptly drenched by the rain. Jeziba ran over to me, leaning over me. I simply looked up into the sky. The world was going white, noise fading away. I heard the beating of massive wings. A huge bronze dragon flew above the clearing, setting themselves down next to me.

"The Epoch Hunter got away, didn't he?" Jeziba nodded.

"Indeed. He wasn't ever able to die, anyways. He's destined to die in Durnholde"

White light filtered in through the clouds, snuffing out the rain and lightning, and I closed my eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Sorry for the shorter chapter, I cut off a bit at the end in favor, of, well, this ending.**

**Guesses as to who Edward was from last chapter:**

**Tich wrote:My guess would be another bronze dragon that sees sel as a threat to either the bronze flight or something.**

**Response:Well, not quite. Powers of a bronze? Oh yeah, that part's spot on.**

**Mlaia3 wrote:Hmm, Nozzy-kins, or an Infinite dragon? Most curious...**

**Response:Um, nozzy-kins? What is that, exactly? Infinite dragon is the winner.**

**11SnowLeopard11 wrote:Gonna guess here and say that Edward is part of the Infinite Dragonflight?**

**Response:WINNER! And not just any member, he is THE Epoch Hunter!**

**Dusty the Umbravita wrote:My only guess is Cho'gal, though I also guess that if a Bronze dragon was channeling from another time maybe his voice would come out distorted or something. But my main guess is Cho'gal!**

**Response:Almost with the bronze dragon, since we have seen that Infinites used to be Bronzes, but way off with Cho'gall. Sorry.  
><strong>


	14. Chapter 14:Exposed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or any of it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Sorry for the longer-than-normal wait, here's an extra long chapter to make up for it!**

* * *

><p>I came too with my head being stroked by someone's hand. I was on my side still, in a warm place. I slowly opened my eyes, unsure of how well they would react to my thoughts.<p>

Bright.

I moaned in pain. My entire body felt bruised and battered. I tried to remember what had happened.

Hunting. Amanthe trapped. Edward some sort of drake. His body pressing against my back, using his silver cracks to burn me, incinerate me, Jeziba saving me, the bronze dragon...

I focused my eyes on whoever was stroking my head. It was Amanthe. I was too weak to protest. I simply allowed my other eye to look where my head was resting.

In her lap, she was sitting on the floor. I opened my mouth to try to ask something. It felt like it was filled with sand. I coughed, before managing to croak the word out.

"Where..." I whined in pain. Just speaking that one word had sent painful shivers through my entire body. Amanthe kept stroking my head.

"Shh. You're hurt very badly. Don't try to move. Don't try to talk. Just rest. We're in my house" I tried to nod my head, but it wouldn't respond. I settled for closing my eyes, blacking out again.

When I came back around, I was laying on something soft. I moved my head around, discovering I could, and felt that it was a pillow. I was laying on a mattress. There was something covering my body. A blanket. I was too weak to shake them off. I didn't want to, either. It was warm. Something was pricking under my scales. I opened an eye. I couldn't see it. I was still ground level. Somehow Amanthe had gotten it underneath me while I was passed out. I sighed. Something nearby smelled really good, but it was out of my field of vision. I closed my eyes again.

When I came too for good, I was still on the mattress, covered by the blanket. I moaned in hunger and thirst. How _long_ had I been out? I heard someone's quiet footsteps coming up the stairs. Amanthe walked in. I noticed I was in her room. She knelt down next to my head, stroking my crest, the scales at the top of my head, harder than most, and a color more akin to Amanthe's skin than my normal purple-blue scales. I sighed. She produced a vial of red liquid, similar to the healing potion the young elf had given me in the Wetlands months ago.

"Here, open your mouth. I put in boar juice so it'll taste better" I opened my mouth and Amanthe emptied the contents into my mouth. She was right, it did taste MUCH better with boar juice. I swallowed it down. She next produced a vial filled with a blue-green liquid. "This is troll's blood elixer. Drink, it'll speed up your recovery" I eyed the potion nervously. "Oh relax, it's not _actually_ troll blood" I let out a breath I wasn't aware I was holding, my breath feeling like I had chewed mint leaves. I drank the troll's blood elixir in the same way as the healing potion. It tasted like water, so I had no trouble swallowing it.

"Thank... thank you" Amanthe rubbed the scales on my crest again.

"Anytime. Thank you for saving my life" I suddenly remembered a detail, a crucial detail.

"How did, how did I get here?"

"There was this blood elf and a gnome next to each other. They told me to get Samuel. So I did, and, boy you were a mess. You had black marks all over you. You still do. Are you sure the flesh is alive? I mean, when someone's flesh is so burned it's black..."

"My flesh is already dark. It's not, it's not too bad if it's black. If it were white or a light gray, then I would be in trouble"

"Oh, oh good. So anyway, I got Samuel back. I took a close look at you. You weren't breathing, but they told me that they had 'frozen' you"

"In time"

"What?"

"They froze me in time. That gnome was a bronze dragon" Amanthe blinked.

"Damn... so anyways, that elf teleported us back here. Once he did you started breathing really slowly, so I assumed you weren't frozen anymore. I healed you, and, well, you should know, that was five days ago. Want anything to eat, drink?" She pulled something out of my flesh with a light prick. "The G.I.V. thing the gnomes gave me was keeping you hydrated until now, but now you can actually drink, so we won't need that" My stomach growled menacingly. Amanthe chuckled, scratching my crest. "I'll take that as a yes" Amanthe was at the door-frame when she turned around. "Oh, and another thing. That gnome, err, dragon, told us to never go more than one kilometer from Stormwind. Samuel could, but not us" I sighed.

"Wonder why. Good night" I closed my eyes again and passed out, but not before hearing my last two words returned.

* * *

><p>That night I had a nightmare. I was flying across the sky over a sea of fog. I couldn't see where I was. If it weren't for the wind on my face I wouldn't have known I was moving. The fog below me seemed to take a deep breath. Edward- no, the Epoch Hunter burst out of the clouds, horns aimed at my chest. I maneuvered out of the way, only to find him circling around. This time he had another drake with him. A smaller one, about my size. They weren't looking at me. I looked to my right. There he was.<p>

Verthelion.

He was flying in the same direction as me, but he seemed strained, dodging non-existent blasts. A huge green mist opened up a ways infront of him and started flying at him. I opened my mouth to scream but no noise came out. He just flew there, looking his fate in the face. I flew at him, determined to push him out of the way. Just as I was about to the smaller drake smashed into me, knocking me out of the way. I could only watch as the cloud of green mist overtook my destined mate, his body falling limply to the world far below, the Epoch Hunter and his friend vanishing into puffs of sand.

* * *

><p>I woke up with a start, thrashing my head about. I heard someone hit the ground, prompting me to open my eyes. Amanthe stood back up.<p>

"Are you alright? You looked like you were having a nightmare" She paused for a moment. "Do drag-I mean, drakes, get nightmares?" Despite the soreness all along my body, I chuckled.

"All the time" I lost my mind briefly, wandering among dozens of topics, touching each one briefly before wheeling away to another. "Can I see myself?" Amanthe bit her lips.

"I'm, not sure you'll want too..."

"Please, I need to know how bad off I am"

"Alright. Just, promise not to freak out too much, alright?" I nodded my head. Amanthe went back out and returned with a mirror. She pulled the blankets off of me and whispered a small spell. The mirror floated up. So _that's_ how she got the mattress under me. The mirror angled itself towards me. My eyes widened and my pupils contracted at my reflection.

I was completely singed, almost every single one of my scales blackened and charred. A portion of my side was lacking scales from the Epoch Hunter's sand breath, and the blue flesh was blackened. I was covered in burns. Nothing that wouldn't heal, but still, it was unnerving to look at. Amanthe knelt down next to me.

"You saved my life. Thank you" I smiled.

"You would've done the same for me" Amanthe nodded.

"That's what friends are for" I smiled.

"It is" Amanthe stood up.

"I'll bring you the food. Don't move, I don't know how deep the burns went. Never can tell with magical burns" She walked down the stairs, and shortly began walking back up, the smell of something tantalizing, delectable in her hands. It was... it was...

BOAR!

Amanthe came in with a platter filled with the meat. She put it down next to my head and quickly backed up. Smart idea, I nearly bit her hand off. She pulled it away with a yelp, but I didn't bother to apologize, I was a little preoccupied. I ignored the aches and pains all along my body as I ate, only stopping to breath, before laying my head back down. Amanthe came over to me and scratched the scales on my side. I sighed. That felt oddly good. In spite of myself I shivered.

The door slammed downstairs, and Amanthe jumped so high up she banged her head on the roof. She ran downstairs, and the one voice I did NOT want to hear right now echoed up. Catarina.

"Is Selria here? She hasn't been in for a few days, is everything all right with her?"

"Selria is perfectly fine, well, she will be, she got attacked by a cultist. She's still recovering"

"May I come in and see her?" I heard Catarina take a step. My breath hitched.

"NO! Nononononononono!", Amanthe rattled off.

"Why not? I just want to see her, she can't be that bad, can she?" Oh no. I quickly shifted to my mortal form just in case she barged up. Nothing happened. Damn it! What was wrong with me?

"Oh yes, she can. She needs space to heal, she got horribly, horribly burned. Just, go away"

"Aman-"

"Cat, I'm a priestess. Let me worry about her recovery, alright?"

"Mm, alright, but send her over to the store the moment she's well, alright?"

"Got it. Now please go" A sigh.

"Alright. I really was just asking to see her..."

"I don't think she would want anyone to see her in her condition" No, no I wouldn't want anyone to see that my condition is 'being a drake'. Catarina sighed again.

"Alright. Goodbye. Send Selria my best wishes, alright?"

"I'll be sure to. Goodbye" The door closed, and I relaxed. I decided to try out my muscles, see the damage done to them. I slowly flexed every muscle in my body, starting at my face, then tightening my throat, flinching all four of my arms, my claws, my wings, and my tail. It all seemed to be working. I got up on my feet, the blanket falling off. I trembled on my feet for a few seconds, before slowly raising up my form, folding in my wings as close as they would get to my body for room. Amanthe pounded up the steps, stepping back when she saw me standing.

"Oh, you're up" I nodded.

"Those drinks help a lot" I stumbled on my front legs, making me temporarily bow down to the wooden wall in front of me. Amanthe was in front of me in a flash, bracing herself against the ground and pushing me up while I got control back over my front legs.

"Up, up you go. Apparently not enough. The troll's blood elixir will fix that, though" I stumbled, and sat down, folding my wings up so that the primary claws on them rested over my shoulders, curling my tail out from under them. I wanted to try putting up the illusion again. I tried hard, forcing the magic to flow through my body. When it stopped, there was a human female sitting on the floor. Amanthe jumped back.

"WHOA! You look, um, good, you look good" I raised my arms. I was covered in red marks. Burns, I presumed. The troll's blood elixir seemed to be working, though. If I looked closely enough I could see the red skin slowly fading back to it's natural color. I stood up, and stumbled before catching myself.

"So..."

"So..."

"What the hells was with Edward? Before I passed out I heard the bronze dragon call him the 'Epoch Hunter'. What could that mean?" Amanthe shrugged.

"I don't know, I'm not an expert on dragons. Have you ever seen any drake like him?"

"Never. And he had power like a bronze would, over time. That makes no sense, though, he wasn't one"

"Well, he's gone, right?"

"Yes, he is. Why do you think we can't go more than a kilometer from Stormwind?"

"I don't know. Maybe they put up wards against something like him?" I nodded.

"Probably it" I stretched.

"I'm going to go walk, can't let my muscles atrophy" Amanthe nodded.

"Good. Just be careful, you have a pretty nasty injury from where that sand breath got you" I sighed, my attention shifting briefly to the raw skin on my left side, right above my hip.

"Amanthe, I'm not some helpless whelp. I can take care of myself"

"Like you 'took care' of Edward?" That shut me up. I walked down and out, going to the -remains- of the park. I loved the destroyed park. It was so high up. You could see the water from all the way up there. I looked down at the ocean far below me. I sighed, and settled into a thoughtless, motionless silence. That's when I heard them. Jeziba and the bronze dragon. Currently Jeziba was talking.

"Should we wipe their memories of the Epoch Hunter?" What? Wipe our memories? Hold on, they were talking about me and Amanthe?

"No. Our wards are keeping them safe while Selriona remains in Stormwind, but once she leaves, it won't be possible for the wards to keep up with the pace. The infinite will almost definitely make another attempt on her life then, they need their memories to be able to fight off any attack" What do you mean 'when I leave'? Keep up with the pace? How fast will I go? Where?

"Alright. What about Aeonus? How are his wards around Verthelion?" Why does Verthelion need wards? Is he in danger?

"He says they are crumbling. The energies of his location are overloading the spell's matrices" A short silence.

"Have him weave the energy into a negative matrix and send it back through the source. That will counter the massive influx of energy from the various powers in the area. In addition, have him operate from a past time pocket, before the world tree was created, just to be safe"

"How would he do that? You know time trinkets are required for the dimensional pockets"

"Exactly. Before Kil'jaedan was banished, he gave some of his lieutenants communication devices. These devices became corrupted with the Eredar, long, long ago. As such, any remaining Burning Legion camps will have devices from his inventory that were created before the world tree was created. He can get those and set up the time pocket" A brief pause.

"You always did have a head for wards"

"It's what I do. Shall I tell Aeonus the plan, or..."

"I will. I want to speak to him at least one last time before he, before he turns. It's a shame he does, though" Wait, turn? What does she mean by a bronze dragon turning?

"It's a shame any of you do. Well, I need to check on the energy matrix for our wards. They are likely unaccustomed to covering such a wide area as Stormwind" Hold on. Any of _you_ do? Was Jeziba not a bronze dragon? Was he a mortal? Possibly a dragonsworn? I smiled. He wouldn't be able to get away from me as easily as the bronze. I got up and walked to the alley I heard their voices coming from and waited. I heard footsteps. I spun around and grabbed somebody by the neck, thrusting them into the wall, holding them up with one hand and holding my other one up, a dark blue fireball readied and burning in my open palm. It was Jeziba.

"What were you talking about? Why do Verthelion and I need wards? Wards from what? Answer me!" Jeziba smiled, and flicked his wrist. Immediately the world slowed down to a standstill, and he easily slipped from my frozen grip, my flames frozen in mid air. He stepped to the side. Damn it! Had that bronze taught him how to stop time?

"All in due time, Selriona. All in due _time_" He walked away, and when he turned a corner, time resumed. My fireball ended of it's own accord. I was about to get angry, when something in his conversation stopped me.

Verthelion needed wards. My future mate was still alive.

All I had to do was find him.

* * *

><p>It all started with this 'newspaper'.<p>

Amanthe had brought it in on December the thirtieth, a day after I had healed. She had come in, and held it up for me.

"What about it?"

"Look at the top right, Selriona" I did. It read something like the following:

**Three husbands missing, Murder?**

Today, three men were reported missing by their wives. Their names were as follows:

Raphael Shiphend

Samuel Longshaft

Andrew Siles

There were three piles of ashes found in Old Town around the time they went missing. While it

has not been confirmed that the ashes are the three men, the possibility lies open.

Stormwind Guard is conducting an investigation into

what could have happened to these three men. If you have any information as to their whereabouts, contact

a guard as soon as possible. As usual in times of war, citizens are urged

to keep a high level of awareness about happenings in their area.

Amanthe put the paper down onto the table and folded it up.

"Well? Do you know anything about that? Because I just so happen to know _somebody_ who could burn people to ashes"

"Okay, yes, so three days before Winter Veil, I was jumped by three thieves and I killed them. But that was on the twenty-second, these can't be the same people!" Amanthe placed her head in her palm.

"You... killed them. Couldn't you have just run away?"

"I was surrounded"

"Well, how about, no. Well you could've, no that wouldn't work either. Couldn't you have just beaten them up?" I froze. I could've done that. Some of my strength did transfer over to my mortal form. They didn't have to die. This thought churns my insides for a moment before I force it down.

"What's done is done. So what do we do about the ashes? I mean, they can't trace those to me, can they?"

"To be completely honest Selriona, I have no idea. There might be a way for them to figure out what sort of flames burned them"

"Alright, but they'll just assume it's a cultist who did that"

"Yes, but they might search everyone for twilight energy, and I am PRETTY sure you would turn up positive on that test"

"They might not even find out that it was twilight flames that did it" Amanthe sat down at the paper, tracing circles around the article with her finger.

"I don't know. We can't do anything short of running away, so let's just, keep our heads down. So"

"So?"

"So, are you going to watch the new year fireworks?"

"New year fireworks? There's actually something for that?" She nodded.

"To celebrate the beginning of a new year, where hopefully things will improve"

"That's rather pointless" Amanthe shrugged. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

"It's a culture thing. Don't dragons have cultures too?" I shook my head.

"The others do. My flight was created literally during a war, so we haven't exactly had _time_ to develop one" Amanthe looked taken aback at this response.

"No culture? Really?" I shrugged.

"From what I can tell so far, it's not much lost"

"How is it not much lost?"

"Well, we need to focus on-" Amanthe cut me off just before I could say killing.

"On what?"

"On nothing. You're right. It's just, we haven't had much opportunity to develop a culture. And after the war we'll probably be wiped out..." I felt blood rushing to my face again, but this time it was hotter, more unstable. I took a deep breath, calming my nerves. Now wasn't the time to think about that. "I'll watch the fireworks. Not like I have anything better to be doing" I walked outside, going to the Scribe of Stormwind.

There were more guards out then normal. I turned my usual corner, and found a mob infront of me. People packed the narrow street, held back by a few guards in the middle. One was shouting over the riot.

"Everybody back! This is a crime scene! Everybody back!" Oh. Shit, they had sealed off my route. That was where the ashes were... I needed a new path. I circled around the crowd and went through other streets. I passed one particularly large building labeled 'The Pig and Whistle'. From what I could hear from inside, it was a place like where I stayed in Kharanos. I could hear the raucous laughter from inside. Turning a few more corners, I soon found myself at the Canals. I looked at the water in them, covered in a thin layer of ice from the cold. I breathed out, forcing the warm air over my nose, steam forming in the air as hot clashed with cold. I reached over the edge and bent down, touching the tip of my finger to the ice. A chunk of ice around the point of contact instantly broke off from the little force, prompting me to pull my hand back and continue on.

I was turning out of the Trade District when I heard a _hssssssss,weeeeer_ sound behind me. I whirled around and got smacked with a little pink paper rocket in the nose.

I crumbled to the ground, holding my nose with one hand, and giving the female human whelp infront of me a death glare. She ran up to the rocket and picked it up, little yellow sparks still flying out from its end.

"I am SO, SO sorry miss! Are you alright?" I couldn't suppress the anger in me.

"Beat it before I shoot the rocket at you" Before I could blink she was gone. I rubbed my nose, small bits of red on my finger. Great. I'm bleeding now. I wiped the blood away with my finger and placed it into my mouth, reabsorbing the nutrients in it. The blood had a little salty taste, and I was glad for the sodium to be back inside me. By the time I arrived in the Scribe of Stormwind the bleeding had subsided, though I had had to re-absorb my blood four more times. I thought about what Amanthe had said, about culture. I wasn't lying when I said that my flight didn't have anything that could be called a culture; we had been created for the sole purpose of war, existing solely during the duration of the war we were created for, and all of us, save for me, being completely committed to that war, and I was too, before I learned that the voice in my egg had lied to me.

I looked at Catarina inside the store, giving some ink to a night elf male. What was it about culture that made the mortals so different from us? I tried to remember back to when I was a red whelp in my egg, see if my instincts before they had been changed said anything of red dragon culture. I got absolutely nothing from that attempt. No memory whatsoever, not even a hole saying there used to be something here, just, nothing.

I had celebrated the Feast of Winter's Veil because I might not have had the chance to do so again. I had secretly enjoyed it, but while I had, I was distracted from Edward, no, the Epoch Hunter's omen. I could have died during that. The holiday might have killed me. But the mortals had been looking forward to the feast all year. It gave them something to look forward to, something to strive onward through their lives for, even through the misery of Deathwing's war.

While I was celebrating, I didn't worry. I didn't panic. I wasn't looking over my shoulder, around each corner. I could relax. My mind was renewed. Not to mention the simple pleasure of the holiday itself. It was dangerous, but it was _worth it_.

Maybe this culture thing wasn't so bad after all.

I made up my mind. I would embrace mortal culture as long as I lived with them. It didn't have to make sense. It was culture, it had made sense once, and slowly diluted over time. It gave a race hope, joy, and something to look forward to, morals to hold themselves to, it enhanced their lives probably more than they gave it credit for. Only somebody who, until then, had virtually no culture could realize this. I smiled as I walked in. Catarina noticed me and returned the grin.

"Selria! Hello, how are you?"

"New year's coming up. Can you tell me what the fireworks are going to be like?"

"Oh, they're amazing, bigger each year than the one before it. Let me tell you, I caught a sneak peek at the fireworks in the dwarven district, they've really outdone themselves this time. Why, you're going to watch them?"

"Yes, I am"

"Huh, wouldn't have pegged you for the holiday type of person" I shrugged, and lied.

"People change" But how much of a lie was that? I was so much more mortal in personality then before I was shot down. I was living proof that people do change. So, I guess I told the truth.

"Since when?"

"Since now. So, what've we got today?"

"Well, with new years coming up, some mages are probably going to stop by here for glyphs of sparkling, add in their own fireballs to the mix. Most can't make the glyphs themselves, though, so you'll probably not have much to do" I nodded.

"Alright, got it" Catarina was right, mages were dropping by constantly for a glyph of sparkling. One went into the corner and tested it, shooting a tiny fireball into the air, which burst into a shower of green and orange sparks after traveling a short distance. One person came in that made my blood boil. That mortal, no doubt a dragonsworn, Jeziba. He, once again, simply walked in like nobody noticed him and approached Catarina.

"I'll have a glyph of sparkling, please" She nodded vacantly, like she were simply a machine carrying out instructions. I looked at him.

"_You_. What are you doing here?" He looked my way and he actually had the NERVE to smile!

"What? Just because I am on a mission here, doesn't mean I can not enjoy the festivities of the location"

"Why tell me you're on a mission here? Why are they reacting so calmly to you?"

"Well, you already know I am on a mission here, so why not? And the humans?" He waved his hand towards them. "A simple autopilot spell, well, not really simple, only a handful of mages know it" He traded money and a glyph with Catarina. "At any rate, I have what I came here for. Take care, Selriona" He walked out, and the others in the store seemed be revitalized as the autopilot spell faded away. Catarina blinked, but said nothing.

In the end, it turned out she was right. I didn't have much of anything to do. I settled for flipping through a book on glyphs. It turns out there were a lot of glyphs. Ones for warlocks, ones for druids, ones for rogues, one for cooks, one for pretty much everything imaginable. My eye caught on one particular glyph. Glyph of Twilight Fireball. However, after reading it, I realized it was just a cosmetic spell for mages to make their fireballs look different, and scare the crap out of people. Hmm. Make a note of that for Samuel. The nine hours that normally drew themselves out over a long time quickly compressed, and before I knew it, my shift was over. I walked outside, looking at the snowstorm that had kicked up in the meantime. Well, definitely not taking Amanthe to hunt today.

Shame.

I wrapped my clothing around me. A particularly nasty flurry of snow wrapped itself around me, and in the veil of ice I shifted my clothing scales to a heavy fur jacket, the heaviest I could make them into. The weather paused for a moment, the snow stopping, the wind dieing in an instant. It was like the world was holding it's breath. I breathed out.

A wall of cold and ice smashed headfirst into me. Ice pelted my skin like rain, winds knocked me to the ground and nearly lifted me up of their own strength. Pebbled flew around, tossed by the cyclones. I stood up, forcing my eyes open. Snow and ice, mostly ice, was swirling in a circle around me, tiny pieces of the road uprooted and moving in a vast cyclone around me. There was an upward pull, the wind sailing up to an area of low pressure, flying to fill a void, taking everything with it. I knelt down and grasped the stone below me, holding on with all my strength as the clouds lowered and engulfed me in a whirling, twisting, sucking vortex of snow, the ice pulverized by the winds. I screamed, the wind being pulled out of my mouth by the lack of air some place far above me.

I scrambled for purchase on the ground with my hands as I lifted up slightly, reaching in vain for the ground below me. I didn't dare turn to me true form and rely on my weight to root me to the ground, the vortex was making me hardly able to breath, and in my more air-dependent real form, it would kill me in a minute. Luckily, as a mortal I was simply light-headed. I should have been exhilarated to be flying, the ground under me, the winds supporting me, but it was horrifying. I had no control. I was entirely at the mercy of the winds. I finally understood the mortal's fear of flight. They had no control over it. They were helpless before something carrying them should it decide to drop them. Sure, there were a few who could levitate themselves, but it was apparently impossible to completely rid yourself of the innate terror.

"Hold on!" I felt my body right itself, rigid in form, and be pulled right out of the swirling vortex, snow pelting my face painfully. I emerged from the cloud still suspended, but it was a different sort of suspension, as if the ground was under me and gravity was pulling me forward. A dwarf male with a thick black beard encompassing his face was pulling me forward, his hands grasping the air and drawing in. He put his hands down and I felt the 'ground' under me disappear, falling to the real ground. Almost immediately the winds from the funnel behind me began to pull me in. I stumbled forward. The dwarf grabbed my hand and began pulling me away.

He led me into a little house on the outside of the Trade District, pulling me in and shutting the door behind me. I breathed on my hands, rubbing them together to dispel the cold that had claimed my fingers. He sighed.

"Oh, ya almost got taken by that tornado, drake. Lucky it wasn't a big one" In an instant I had pinned him up to the wall, small blue flames flickering on my hands.

"How do you know? HOW?" He put up his hands in the innocent position.

"Easy, easy! I'm in tha cult, I could sense tha twilight energies on ya. Got training in the earth elements, used the gravity they emanate to pull you out" I put him down, extinguishing the flames on my hands.

"Y-you're in the cult?" He nodded, and briefly bowed to me.

"Yes, I am. I'm working on the inside of Stormwind, since I've been doing this for a long time, the cult thing, I mean. So, who sent you here? Where were you transferred from? I mean, you don't have to tell me, I-I'm just curious is all"

"Um, Cho'gall sent me. I was to remain here until further notice and... mingle"

"Hmm, interesting. I'm about to finish the ritual to summon the minions of an Old god into the throne room, and kill the king and cripple the alliance forces in Hyjal with lack of moral. Soon, the unbelievers will perish in hellfire! Hyjal will burn, and all will be remade. Think you could, help me? You know, if you're okay with that..." I was stunned. It had never occurred to me how much more different the mortals in the cult were from the others, but here he was talking about killing the king and destroying huge amounts of life- okay there's the red drake in me, I thought it was gone- like it was NOTHING! My nerves in my hands starting to tingle, flames pushing outwards.

"I'm sorry," However much I didn't want to kill him, he had made his choice when choosing to join the cult. He was evil. I used to be evil, but it was because I was brainwashed. This man, this _mortal_, had chosen to be evil of his own accord. A blue fireball formed, hovering over each of my hands. "but I can't let you do that" I hurled the fireball at him, his face erupting into an expression of shock and betrayal before the flames attached to him, igniting his clothing with normal orange and red fire, spreading along his body greedily, consuming flesh and muscle and blood. I ran out into the blizzard, and when he had turned to ash, I put out the fires.

Looking back on it, I don't regret killing him at all. As part of the earlier cult joining ceremony you 'kill' yourself and your family forgets about you. They already thought that dwarf was dead. And he was going to kill others if I didn't stop him. Turning him over to the authorities wouldn't work, he would just betray me.

He had saved my life, that I knew, and for that I was grateful, but it was for all the wrong reasons.

* * *

><p>Amanthe, Samuel and I were sitting on a park just inside the Trade District, looking towards the Cathedral's spires reaching high into the purple-shell. We were waiting for the fireworks to start, shooting off back behind it. It was supposed to be a real treat. I sighed, and mentally recounted the days I'd been here. One day, two days, three days, so on. When I stopped counting, I did a quick addition to how long it had taken to get here, and some other things, factoring in some variables for how long I was on the ground, immobilized by Lirastrasza. What I came to was mildly surprising. I was turning four... now.<p>

"Huh, I'm four years old now" Samuel practically exploded.

"WHAT THE HELLS?" Amanthe laughed.

"Moron, only you would react so strongly at that"

"If you haven't forgotten, Amanthe, you reacted so loudly the first time you learned you scared away the prey you were hunting" Samuel lightly punched Amanthe.

"Ha! Wait, so, you're four years old?" I nodded.

"Damn, damn damn damn, you're pretty mature for a four year old. I'd have pegged you for a teenager"

"Up until now I _have_ been adolescent. I'm an adult now, though"

"Okay, so, freakishly-young aside, your birthday was on the new year?" I cocked my head to the side.

"Birthday?"

"The day you were born on a year? Like ours is August Twenty-eighth?"

"I wasn't _born_, Samuel, I hatched from my egg. If anything it would be hatchday"

"Okay, so what do you want as a present for your, um, hatchday?"

"Present on a birthday? Is this another culture thing that I don't know of?" Samuel chuckled.

"I'll let miss slow-priest here explain that" Amanthe growled menacingly in his direction, eliciting an airy laugh from it's recipient. Amanthe sighed, and lowered her voice threateningly.

"If you count my _additional_ studies, Samuel, I'm farther along then you, so _shut up_" With that Samuel's mouth slammed shut, him making some _mmm-mmm_ sounds as the shadow magic kept the words from coming out. Finally he gave up and crossed his arms like a mortal whelp pouting. Amanthe reached over and ruffled his hair. "Anyway, we celebrate people's birthdays, the yearly anniversary of the day they were born, usually by giving them some sort of gift" I nodded.

"Oh" Samuel made some sort of moaning sound from behind his closed lips.

"What's that, brother? Try opening your mouth, it helps you talk"

_SMACK_

"Ow. So anyway, what do you want for your present?"

"Oh, you don't need to do that. You've already done so much for me, I really don't need anything. The fireworks are enough, thank you for the offer though" One of the Stormwind guards walked next to us.

"Hey, you two going to the scan?" Amanthe looked up.

"What scan?"

"Don't you know? Some twilight cultist has killed four people, so we're scanning people to see who has the shadow energy on them. That's what they tell me anyway. Anybody leaving _has_ to get scanned, as well" My throat clenched. "Anyways, just swing by it in the Cathedral square after the fireworks, need to make sure any cultists are rooted out" The guard turned and went on his patrol. Amanthe turned and glared at me.

"_Four _people?"

"Okay yes, but the fourth one was a cultist who was planning on killing the king" With that Amanthe's anger dissipated.

"Oh. Alright" There was a little _pop_, and Samuel started gasping.

"NEVER do that again, sis" The smell of ozone permeated the air, and a bloom of smoke exploded around Amanthe. Where she sat, now crouched a sheep, bleating indignantly. Samuel huffed and looked out towards the Cathedral. Sheep-Amanthe trotted over to Samuel, and bit his arm.

"Ach! Alright, let's try this" Another poof of smoke, and Amanthe turned into a snail, which Samuel placed back between me and himself. I stared at Samuel with bug-eyes. He looked at me. "What? What? Oh all right" He waved his hand, and Amanthe turned back.

Ah, sibling rivalry.

A loud booming noise echoed throughout the entirety of Stormwind.

"Citizens of Stormwind! The brave heroes of the Liberality Confederacy, as you know them the Kingslayers, have slain the wicked ogre Magus Cho'gall in his sanctum, heralding the end of the Twilight cult! They have retrieved a compilation from his inner chambers, detailing the locations and names of _everybody_ in the cult. The compilation is temporarily open to the public in the Trade District, for anyone who wishes to see if a loved one is in the cult" My heart did a somersault. I knew about that compilation, it didn't just contain the cult. It contained the twilight flight's records as well! Verthelion's location would be in there! Wait.

Wait.

Cho'gall was dead?

That meant the Bastion had fallen. My breath hitched briefly. Valiona... she was like a brood-mother to me. She was cranky, she made no effort to hide her distaste for us, but she still took care of me for a year. She brought me food, she taught me of the world, if through a somewhat biased perspective. She was... she was dead. I felt a tear gather in my eye. Valiona was dead. Amanthe was the first to notice.

"Selria?" She used my fake name as people walked by. "What's wrong?"

"The Bastion fell... there was a twilight dragon there, Valiona. She's got to be dead"

"Who was Valiona?"

"Amanthe, what do you know about how twilight drakes are created?"

"Something about the eggs of other dragons, right?"

"Well, I used to be a red whelp. When I was still in my egg, the cult took me from my brood-mother and changed me. Valiona took care of me while I was a whelp" My hands started smoldering. "She was like a brood-mother to me! She watched over me, she didn't let me starve or, or anything, despite her saying whelps disgust her, she went out of her way to teach us about the world when all she had to do was feed us!" Smoke was billowing out of my hands. Amanthe reached over and put a hand on my lap, Samuel walking around to my other side and repeating the action. I dabbed at the tears forming in my eyes. There was the mortal personality inheriting again. I would never have cried this easily before... would I have? Valiona still took care of me before then. I didn't really notice how much she meant to me until she was gone.

"It's alright, Selriona. Amanthe and I are here. It's ok" I took a sharp breath in, and stood up.

"I need to see the compilation. If she's alive she'll be in there" I stormed into the Trade District, shoving past the huge mob of various races from the Alliance, all mulling about slowly, waiting for the fireworks. I pushed through to a relatively empty spot. There were three guards and a captain guarding a large book, over which a man was leafing through. He froze.

"No... Charlene, how could you?" He ran off. I stormed up to the book, the guards simply nodding in my way. A little brawl broke out behind them, a draenei and a night elf female were kicking each other, punching. The guards walked over, giving me the opportunity I needed. I grabbed the pages and flipped the book over, being presented with the latter portion, the twilight flight's. I flipped to the V's, the draconic words melding in my mind far more easily than Common. I panted as I went down. Vab, Vae, Vag, Vak, Van, Vap, no, back. Val, look for Val for Valiona. Nothing. I looked back, panting in desperation.

Vab-nothing

Vae-Vaerliona.

Vag-nothing under there.

Vak-nothing there either.

Van-Vaneralion.

Vap-Vaporalion.

I froze, my hands drifting up from the book. No... a dragon's records were only removed if they died. Valiona, my, my... adopting brood-mother was dead. I fought back tears and flipped the pages. I only had a short time before the guards broke up the fight and came back to notice me flipping through the portion of the book written in draconic. I had to hurry. I had to know.

Vel, Ver, there!

Verthelion-Natural Born- Male- Hatched one hundred and three days after Cataclysm- Drake- Age accelerated? Yes- Destined mate? Deceased- Brood-mother? Deceased- Caretaker? Deceased- Initial location? Twilight Highlands- Current location? Hyjal

I quickly flipped the book to the mortal section, landing in the G's when the guards came back. I faked a sigh of relief, and ran back to Amanthe and Samuel with mixed emotions. I flopped down into the bench.

"She's... she's dead" I took a deep breath. "But there's good news too. Verthelion's alive. My mate's alive. I know where he is" As I spoke my spirits lifted higher and higher. "I can go to him. I know where he is, and then I can, and then I can-" WEEEEEEEER. PUOOSH! I looked up at the Cathedral with a start. A shimmering sphere of yellow and blue sparks lit up the sky directly behind the Cathedral. Two streaks of light went up at it's side, exploding into an upwards triangle of gold. More lights soared up, closer and closer together, releasing different amounts of blue and yellow until the sky behind the Cathedral held a Lion's head emblazoned onto a shield held up by two gryphons.

I stared in awe at it, forgetting Verthelion. It was beautiful. The symbol of the alliance faded, and more streaks of light flew up in a flurry, exploding with deafening noise that I didn't care about. I only watched with my mouth open. Red and purple and green an orange and yellow and blue flew across the sky in impossibly intricate paths, forming different paths. They formed the visage of the king's face, Stormwind itself, the head of Onyxia, traced with red against the black purple-shell. Finally, there was a tremendous whirring of fireworks. It seemed like an ocean of light soaring up behind the Cathedral into the sky, where they exploded in tightly synchronized patterns of red, the fire billowing out, an enormous red dragon perching on the Cathedral and roaring to the sky before exploding. Cheering came from the crowd in the heart of the Trade District.

A guard's metal-covered hand clamped down on my neck, making me jump three meters forward. I whirled around, seeing Amanthe and Samuel had both jumped two meters away. The guard laughed.

"Sorry for the fright, I just want to remind you three to get scanned. Here, I'll escort you, it's hard to get to" I wanted to protest. I looked at Amanthe, silently pleading to her to mind control him a little, but she shook her head. Of course. The mind control would eventually wear off. He slowly led me, Amanthe and Samuel to a place right in front of the Cathedral. A few priests were there, and guards around them. I breathed heavily. They were going to find me out. This was it. I looked around at the assembled guards. I couldn't fight that many, even in my true form. The guard motioned for Samuel to go.  
>"Your name?"<p>

"Samuel Sivering"He gulped, and walked to the priests. They held their hands out, and light exploded from them, briefly blinding me. When it cleared, Samuel looked no different.

The guard pushed me forward to go to the priests who would reveal me to the world.

"Your name?"

"Selria" I made up a last name on the spot. "Verthelo" In honor of my mate. I stepped forward, when a hand stopped me. Amanthe's.

"You're not doing this alone. I'm coming with you," She leaned in close to my ear. "I'll distract them, you make a run for it after the scan, alright? They'll be distracted looking at you and me" I nodded, and we both walked up to the priests. Amanthe spoke.

"And my name is Amanthe Sivering" The priests held up their hands, and light once again blinded me, searing into my eye sockets. When it cleared, I looked down at myself. I was covered literally head to toe in some glowing purple substance, my twilight essence highlighted by the spell. It was a dead give-away. I looked up at Amanthe and was stunned. I heard all the guards taking out their swords. Amanthe also had the purple highlights on her, covering her chest, her hair-tail, and parts of her arms. Oh no. She had spent a lot of time with me in her house and hunting. My essence had rubbed off on her. They would think she was a cultist as well. The priests ran back, cowering behind erected barriers of light.

"Amanthe-" One of the guards pointed their sword at us. This was it. We were both going to die.

"Both of them are cultists! Kill the lot of them!"

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Well, they're in a LITTLE bit of a pickle, don't you think?**


	15. Chapter 15:Hated

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>The guards charged at us, like tidal waves coming in to claim their victims and wash them out to sea and die. I wasted absolutely no time in grabbing Amanthe by the waist and jumping us straight over the closest line of guards, setting Amanthe down and both of us making a beeline for the canals.<p>

"Run! Run run faster RUN!" Amanthe and I both sprinted full speed down the streets of Stormwind, the guards still spreading out through the streets. Occasionally I had to throw a fireball at the feet of a guard who tried to engage us, making him or her back off so we could escape. We turned down aisles, up corners, through streets. It had never occurred to me how big Stormwind was until I was escaping from it. I burst across the Scribe of Stormwind, turned down a curve past the Stockades. I turned down through into the mage quarter, more guards jumping into my path, my fireballs blasting them to the sides. How were they spreading information so fast? Amanthe collapsed behind me, breathing heavily. I grabbed her in my arms and ran, carrying her, slowly, as her body weighed me down. I was still strong enough to go on for a while, but I couldn't go at the same pace, and we would suffer for that.

"I... can't..." I heard the pattering of guards ahead of us. We were going to be surrounded.

"Amanthe, I need a barrier" Amanthe took a deep breath. A shell of light engulfed me, an arrow embedding itself in it, before burning from the holy energies and falling to the ground. My feet hastened of their own accord. I was flying down the grass of the mage quarter. A line of guards broke in front of us, making a phalanx with their shields, locking together. I jumped straight up, them raising their shields in anticipation of a dive-bomb attack. Fools. I landed on a shield which was immediately thrust upwards to make me fall and flounder. They didn't know they were dealing with a drake who'd spent more of her life airborne than on the ground.

I easily righted myself and came down behind them on one knee, the force breaking Amanthe's shield, with Amanthe still in my arms, resuming my pace. I spotted somebody on a rooftop and instantly dove down, an arrow splitting the air where my head had been a moment before. I turned around into a corner and ran... into a dead end. I looked around, and set down Amanthe, who stood up, breathing deeply. The guards ran in, slowing down once they had seen us cornered. I backed up to Amanthe, who'd, out of ALL the things to do, had stolen a traveling bag from the ground and put it on her back.

"Scream, then get ready to fly" She nodded, and forced her legs to run up to them. The guards instantly produced a shield wall, swords pointing out to strike from between the shields, but that wouldn't help them. Amanthe drew in a shadow from the dead end, moving it to her mouth, and let out the most horrible scream imaginable. The guards instantly turned tail and ran out the dead end, stumbling over each other to try to get away from the most horrible nightmares that had just emanated from the shadow priestess. It wouldn't last long before they caught themselves and sealed us back in, but it gave me time.

I quickly threw my illusion off, expanding to my full form. I didn't have the room to take flight here, to flap my wings. I needed space. I ran out of the tunnel, looking at the guards quickly recovering their minds from the psychic scream. One looked at me. I breathed a fireball at him, him deflecting it off of his shield, sending it flying onto a brick wall, shattering it. I whipped my tail back, sending a few guards trying to sneak up on me from behind. Amanthe staggered up behind me. I turned around and flapped up, hovering. I swooped down, grabbing Amanthe in my front paws and holding her to my body, elevating myself, soaring high above the guards, laughing down at them.

My good mood quickly ended when I saw the guards on the rooftops taking aim. I let gravity take me down, arrows sailing over my head, breaking on my horns. That was too close. I forced myself into a spin as I dove down, and angled up just above the guards on the ground who had 'hit the dirt', as one had ordered. More arrows sailed past me. I used every trick in my memories to evade the arrows, sailing up farther and farther, and then I was away. I sighed, Amanthe doing the same from below me. Suddenly she screamed.

"LOOK OUT!" Something feathery smashed into my face. I recoiled in shock, roaring loudly, as the aerial guard swung their sword at me. I craned my head back, barely dodging the blow. The gryphon they were riding screeched loudly and dove beak-first at me. I flew just over it, the bird-lion passing below me, its guard smashing into me and falling down. The gryphon let out a startled scream and dove down after them, plumage trailing behind them. I flew upwards, not knowing where I was headed, dodging between the arrows of more aerial guards, knocking each one off of their mounts, which promptly dove to save their riders. I swooped around the spire of the Cathedral, an arrow embedding itself into the stone where I was just a moment before.

Something else took to the sky.

It was a weird thing, a flat circular body with a long tail drooping behind it, with two feathered plumes on said tail. It was a bright red, with a black growth stripe on it's back. Two black wings stretched out from the main body, but they were diminutive, stretched out and still not as long as the main body was wide, doing absolutely nothing to help it stay aloft. Two beady blue eyes were on the front of it's head, located just above a mouth full of two sets of sharp jagged fangs. It's belly was blue and glowing, a slight fog seeping out from it, spilling upwards over it's sides. Oh. So that's how it flew.

On the thing's back was an orc female in golden gray-green armor with the _biggest sword I'd ever seen_, two meters long! And on top of that it was glowing red. Oh, lovely. She flew up to the aerial guards and made a few hand motions, speaking something. The guard nodded, and motioned for the others to leave. I cocked my head sideways, flying in the same manner out from behind the Cathedral. Why had they just left, like the orc had some authority? They should have been trying to kill her. Amanthe knew.

"T-t-that's one of them! One of the Kingslayers!" The orc urged her mount to fly towards me. I took a deep breath, readying a shadowflame breath. Amanthe noticed this. "No! Don't fight! Run! She'll kill you! Run!" I listened to Amanthe's advice and let the air back out, diving below the sword swing that had nearly decapitated me. That sword was _fast_ for something so big. I ducked and swung around, trying to dodge the orc's swings, but she was too fast. It was only her mount's relative sluggishness and my flair for flight that kept me, and by extension Amanthe, alive. She smirked, and jumped at me, off her mount. I widened my eyes and acted purely off of instinct, doing the stupidest thing imaginable, even if it did save our lives.

I retracted back into my mortal form.

This resulted in the dropping of me and Amanthe hundreds of meters to the ground below. The orc cursed as she sailed through the air that had been me a moment before, yelling.

"Shat'a! CATCH ME!" The animal dove after her, the orc grabbing onto it's tail, hoisting herself back up besides me. I scrambled back out of my illusion and grappled for Amanthe, hoisting her in my paws, as she held on to me for dear life. I angled back up, flying towards the gates. The orc was gaining on me, fast. That whatever the hells it was suddenly put on a burst of speed; it could _fly_. I realized now how it flew. It was superior to me in straight speed, but in maneuvers I left it in the dust, with only the uplift to keep it flying, and wings useless to help it maneuver through the air. I panicked, bringing up flames into my crop silently, and firing a quick blast back... at the flying creature.

It struck it right in the glowing gas sac under its body, and the organ instantly deflated, prompting a snarl from the creature. I watched as the mount fell, trying to angle up and slow the fall with residual gas, but it still fell with a crack, the orc jumping off to save herself. She knelt down next to the creature. I turned tail and flew out, quickly getting out of sight from Stormwind and setting down in the woods, letting Amanthe go. She stood up, shaking. I sat down, bowing my head.

"Amanthe, I, I don't know what to say. I'm so, so sorry"

"Sorry? For what?"

"My residue rubbed off on you. If it weren't for me you wouldn't have been attacked. It would have been just better for you if I never showed up-"

"Don't say that! I would have died in the Deeprun tram if you hadn't shown up, and you're my best friend. Don't say that you shouldn't have shown up" I sighed, taking a deep breath.

"Well, what are your plans now?"

"Well, I can't go back to the city, they've REALLY stepped up security since the Cataclysm. You only managed to get out because it had just started locking down on you. In a few moments it'll be impossible. In a few weeks, all the Alliance cities will know about me and you"

"So now what?"

"Well, I'm thinking of joining the Argent Crusade. I heard they lost a lot of people in the war with the Lich King, and that they don't judge your abilities, only what you use them for" I nodded.

"Sounds like a plan"

"Yeah. If I leave now I can probably get to Goldshire to buy supplies for the trip to the plaguelands before my news gets there, to Goldshire, I mean" I bowed my head lower.

"I am so, _so_ eternally sorry, Amanthe" I had an idea. I stood up and laid down on my stomach like I was going to sleep. "Amanthe, let me make it up to you. I'll take you to the plaguelands" It took her a moment to understand what I was saying.

"What? Are you, are you serious? Selriona, you don't need to do that" I glanced at her.

"Yes, I do. Amanthe, you've done so much for me. You took me into your home, you helped me blend in, you saved my life after Edward, looked after me when I was ground sick, I honestly can't recount all the times you've helped me. Please, it's the least I can do" Slowly, hesitantly, Amanthe walked over to me. She scrambled up my back and moved forward until she was at the base of my neck.

"So, um, what do I do?" I stood up and stretched my wings out, taking in the tree tops to burst out from.

"Hold on, and enjoy the view" I started flapping and jumped up, hovering. Amanthe yelped and wrapped her hands tightly around my neck. I croaked. "Can't-breathe" The world was quickly becoming a haze of pain. Amanthe loosened her grip, and I gasped. "Thank you" I angled myself up and started to fly up, breaking through the trees, sending some birds scattering. I flew slowly and evenly for Amanthe. She was leaning against my neck, her eyes closed if I had to guess. I flew towards where Goldshire was. It would be about a two hour flight at this rate.

Slowly, Amanthe got up, relaxing. She gasped.

"It's beautiful..." It was. The night sky was lit up with stars, the clouds from earlier snowstorms banished. The full moon shown down, illuminating the tops of the trees with glistening silver light. The night was so quiet, you might have thought the world had died. "Thanks for this. It's, it's amazing"I chuckled.

"Imagine what _I _see"

"Unbelievable. And, and you see this all the time?" I nodded.

"I was always the one in my patrol with the fastest flying. I love it, especially after the liquid in my egg that was _talking_ to me" Amanthe started stroking my neck, ignoring the bit about the talking liquid.

"Thank you for this. This is incredible" I kept flying on to Goldshire, being careful not to fly to fast for fear of Amanthe falling off. Eventually, I noticed that she had fallen asleep on my back, equilibrium being all that kept her on my back. I allowed a smile to creep to my face. She had done so much for me I couldn't list it. I had gotten her essentially exiled from the Alliance. And she had forgiven me, just like that. I looked down at the world passing below me, and slowly angled my head up to the faint lights of Goldshire in the distance.

I started to slowly glide down towards the ground, keeping Amanthe balanced. I set down and laid down, letting Amanthe roll off. She was on her back, still asleep. She looked so peaceful, but she had a place to go, things to do. I bent down and nudged her stomach. She groaned. I nudged her harder, causing her to open her eyes for an instant before falling back asleep. I sighed, and took a deep breath, roaring, but not in her face. She was up in an instant, looking at me. Before she could get angry, I spoke.

"Amanthe, we're here" I motioned with my head towards the town. "Goldshire's right over there. Get what you need, and I'll meet you back here" She nodded, and did something that caught me a little off guard. She stepped forward and wrapped her hands around me head, hugging me.

"Thank you for doing this. I can't say that enough"

"After all you've done for me? It's the least I can do"

"You saved my life in Stormwind"

"Your life wouldn't have needed saving if it weren't for me"

"You know that's not true in these times" I huffed.

"Oh just go get your supplies" Amanthe pulled away and smiled.

"I'll be sure to" She turned around and walked through the woods, quickly emerging into the small little town of Goldshire. It was a bustling little place usually, occupied with around seven thousand mortals bustling to and fro, either ignorant of or temporarily ignoring the war tearing the world apart around them. But now, in the middle of the night, there was nobody outside save for a few night patrols who ignored Amanthe as she walked into the Lion's Pride Inn. I'd been in there several times as Amanthe showed me around before we were warned not to go over one kilometer from Stormwind. It was a clean place, nowhere near as wild as the inn in Kharanos was. She disappeared inside said inn, leaving me alone in the woods, looking out at the village.

If I were in my mortal form, there would have been no way I could've seen into the village. As it was, I wasn't in my mortal form, so I had little trouble seeing the few people outside. Two guards were walking down the road past me, one female, the farther one male. I decided to have a little fun with them. I shuffled my tail on the ground, rustling up some snow. Instantly the two stopped and looked my way warily. I struggled to suppress a chuckle. They stayed for some time before walking on, probably deciding I was some late night squirrel... or whatever's out at night in winter.

That thought reminded me how cold it was, and how very cold blooded I was. The last of my adrenaline from the escape seeped away, and I collapsed down, shutting my eyes.

* * *

><p>I was in Amanthe's house, in my true form. I looked around, and saw two people with me. One was a night elf male in the corner, his hands channeling green energy and tiny green leaves around them, a pale blue mist spilling out from him into the walls, seeming to create the structure of the dream I was in. He didn't seem to notice me, his concentration was so deep. The other was the orc, her sword leaning against the wall. If I looked closely enough I could see the blue mist flowing along it. The orc was glaring at me. If looks could kill... I'd be dead. Oh wait. Some looks <em>can<em> kill, I thought, recalling the time Cho'gall decimated an entire squadron of Alliance rogues with his eye beams. Luckily this wasn't one of those looks. She snarled at me.

"You killed Shat'a"

"That was the creature you were riding, right?" I backed up as she took her sword off the wall.

"She was my friend, that nether ray. We had such a bond. So intelligent too, almost like a person..." She briefly looked lost, staring into the distance as she ran a finger along her sword's edge, no cut forming. She looked back at me, snapping herself back into reality, or, well, as much reality as this was. "And you killed her" I chuckled darkly.

"You're not real. This is a dream" She smiled in a way that made me think _'Uh oh'_.

"Yes, it is, both a dream and real. I asked Fandulor here to transport me to you in your sleep. I am very, _very_ much real, though" I widened my eyes.

"A druid..." She took a step forward, slinging the sword so that it's tip was imbedded into the ground, the handle up near her head.

"You killed Shat'a. I'm coming for you, drake. I will find you. And then..." She took another few steps closer, into swinging range. "I'm going to kill you" She hefted her sword up into a ready position by her ears. "But first, I'll kill your little friend, let you feel what you did to me. Trust me, after I do, death will seem like an act of mercy" She swung her sword sideways, cutting through me.

* * *

><p>It felt like seconds, but when I opened my eyes light was streaming through the tree tops, warm and sticky, the snow under me slushy. I groaned in lethargy despite the real-nightmare and tried to fall asleep again, but I felt somebody nudging my head, to be more specific, my ear-plates. I groaned and focused my eyes on them. Amanthe. I yawned deeply.<p>

"Ungh. What time is it?" Amanthe stood up, taking her knee away from my head.

"It's the morning. You were asleep when I got back, so I figured I'd go to sleep for the time" Amanthe wiped sweat off of her brow. "Damn it, it's hot. The weather's been so wild lately, it's winter and it feels like summer" I chuckled slowly, barely any energy in me.

"It's the whole 'world ending' thing. Get used to it" I remembered my nightmare, suddenly urged to ask a question. "Who are the Kingslayers?"

"They're the members of a guild called Liberality Confederacy, established way back from before the Dark Portal re-opened. They were the ones who slew the Lich King, hence, Kingslayers. They had done lots of other heroic things, saved the world many other times, but that's what really brought their fame to show. The single greatest fighting organization in the world"

"That orc" Amanthe nodded.

"They're a cross-faction guild, taking anyone from both the Alliance and the Horde, which is why the guards listened to her. If there was a human from the Liberality Confederacy in Orgrimmar they would be given similar, if not the same, respect. You wouldn't stand a _chance_ against even their worst fighter, neither would the guards" I groaned and forced myself up, eating some of the snow to hydrate myself.

"We need to go. That orc visited me in a dream, she told me she was going to find me and" I grimaced. "kill both of us" Amanthe took a strangled gasp, her face quickly shifting to panic and alarm.

"We, we need to go. Right now. If one of the Kingslayers wants to kill us, then Light we'd better get moving. How're you feeling?" I stretched a stiff wing out.

"Tired from the cold snow, but warming up. I can fly" Amanthe nodded and walked over to my side, scrambling on. I noticed she had a little extra weight, probably the supplies. I flapped up and started to sail onwards and upwards, my wings feeling stiff from the night, and Amanthe still letting out a startled yelp. "So, the plaguelands, right?" There was a little pause before Amanthe answered.

"Yes" I sighed.

"Amanthe, if you just nodded, remember that I can't see that"

"Oh. Sorry,"

The warmth of the sun's rays were slowly heating up my body. I was getting more energetic, and flying was getting easier, the stiffness in my wings fading away. My internal compass pointed me north, and I flew that way. The world passed below me slowly, as not to have Amanthe fall off.

"What were the supplies you got?"

"Water, lots of it. I figured I can hunt for food, thanks to you" She leaned down over my head and scratched the scales there. It felt quite good. I allowed a lofty chuckle escape my jaws. I felt ridiculously smug all of a sudden.

"Told you that hunting would be useful to learn" A laugh from my back.

"Oh, rub it in, will you?" I changed the subject.

"So, water. There's one _tiny_ problem with that, depending on how much you got. Judging by your extra weight, enough for maybe three days for you, right?"

"Um, yes. I figured you could drink from streams"

"You figured right, but three days won't be enough. We'll have to pass through the Burning Steppes and the Searing Gorge" A second passed while Amanthe processed what I had just said.

"Shit. This won't be enough water, will it?" I shook my head.

"No, it not even close"

"Well, now what? The Kingslayers have a few mages in their ranks who can conjure water, and not that cheap stuff that turns to dust after fifteen minutes, they are skilled enough to make it stay. They won't have any problems with dehydration OR food. How will we get through?" I stopped moving forward, hovering above the ground, thinking. Finally, I got an idea, turning around and starting to fly east.

"We can make haste to Redridge mountains. From there we can restock our water from the orcs there. I can convince them we're friendly, and then it's a straight flight through the Steppes, into the Badlands. The Badlands aren't as bad as the Gorge, and we should be fine until we get to Loch Moden, where there's water everywhere" Amanthe nodded.

"I like that plan. But, are you sure you can get the orcs there to give us water?"

"Easily. A twilight drake and a human covered in twilight energy on an important mission to Cho'gall? No problem, here's some water!" I said, mimicking the approximate response I expected. "Provided others there don't kill us first...", I added as an afterthought.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing, just, um, just enjoy the flight"

We continued on, flying through Elwynn forest. Amanthe was so quiet, I had several times to ask if she was still there, it was that hard to feel her weight, even with the added water. Each time she said she was fine, just marveling at the view. It must have been amazing for her. I've been able to fly my whole life since I hatched, and I was still sometimes caught breathless by the world from up above. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for her. For hours I flew east, until I decided it would be in both our best interests to stop and drink. I needed to breathe or I'd be dead in less than a minute, but oddly enough, I only needed to drink every two days to not, you know, die. More often than a mortal, but still, not as often as I should have. I didn't really care. If I had to drink every 14 hours to stay alive I'd probably go mad.

I started descending near a lake, spreading out my wings into a glide.

"Why are we stopping?"

"Water. Food. That kind of thing" Another pause. "You just nodded, right?"

"Um, yeah" I landed smoothly, bringing first my hind legs onto the ground, then my front legs, stopping and lowering myself to the ground so Amanthe could get off. She took out a waterskin and poured some of it into her mouth. I trotted over to the nearby lake, and dipped my snout in, drinking from the lake. I stopped several times to breath, before going back in. Amanthe called from behind me.

"I'm going to go hunt, meet you back here?" I whipped a stone into the lake with my tail.

"Deal. I'm going to hunt too, after drinking" Amanthe vanished into the trees, and soon I lost her smell too. I filled my stomach with water, and decided I would fill my crop with meat, and call it a meal. I launched myself towards the woods, far enough away from Amanthe so that I wouldn't disrupt her hunting. I didn't need stealth, no wild forest animal could outrun me. I picked up the scent of a wolf, and launching myself through the woods, quickly fell upon a pack, crushing one under my claws. I whipped my tail at a nearby one, the force sending it into a tree, cracking it's skull. The others ran off, spreading out before I could move to kill another one.

I got off of the wolf I had pounced on, and ate the two carcasses. Their meat filled my crop, and by that time the water in my stomach had drained away into the rest of my body, so I decided to move the meat into my stomach, and set out for some more wolves to fill my crop again for when my stomach digested the food. Eventually I did, and I returned back to the shore of the lake. I looked around. Amanthe was nowhere to be seen. I stretched out my claws into one of the few piles of snow left. I slashed at it experimentally, even though I knew full and well what would happen. The snow scattered to the right. I was about to breathe fire at it, but I caught myself. Bringing the flames into my crop now would turn the wolf meat there to ash. I settled for a rock on the shoreline, and curled up on it to sun myself. The rock was warm, and the sun's rays, combined with it, felt amazing, filling every corner of my being with heat and energy.

I sighed and closed my eyes, blocking out all sensation save for the heat. I don't know how long I was there. I must've fallen asleep, otherwise I would have noticed someone with me. I would have doubly noticed the scraping sound of ground being picked up.

In fact, I didn't notice anything at all until Amanthe nailed me on the snout with a glob of mud.

I snapped up with a startled roar, glaring at Amanthe, standing ten meters from me, covered in mud, slapping her hands sideways along each other, up and down, to clear off fresher mud from the glob she had just thrown at me. I shook my head to throw the mud off. I glared at her, and got a mischievous idea in my brain. It would help her too, the exercise. The sinister joy I would be getting spread through my brain, until it took all my will- and facial muscle -power to keep a 'pissed off' face.

"Score one for me!", said Amanthe, laughing. I glared at her.

"Oh. You're dead" I jumped out at her, and she instinctively started to run away. Well enough. I ran after her, chasing her through the woods, her playful jogging slowly turning to desperate running as her mind no doubt made the false connection that I was trying to provide, that I was going to kill her. Of course, it wasn't too easy to keep up with her, as I had to weave between trees and through smaller spaces compared to my frame than her, but I did.

"Selriona, please! Please, I'm sorry!" Forgiven, I thought, but I kept my murderous glare up in time for her to look back and see it. I kept chasing her, watching her run through trees and lightly jump over logs. Slowly, however, she started to tire. Each time she made a slight necessary jump over a log her legs buckled and threatened to give way. I continued after her. I even circled around, silently, hiding myself in the woods. Amanthe took this moment to collapse on a rock and start breathing heavily. She was looking around frantically, missing my hiding spot. I let out a warning growl and instantly Amanthe looked my way, and instantly got up, stumbling, running the other way. I pounced out, aiming at the spot where she was, landing so that if I did get her I wouldn't crush her, but she 'got away'. I felt so evil, doing this, but it was all in fun. Well, not for her, but she would understand when I stopped. And it would help strengthen her lungs.

Amanthe was panting extremely loud, which made me feel a bit worried, but she hadn't collapsed entirely yet(The operating word) so she had some strength left in her. I let out a growl again, and pounced at her, landing just behind her. She spun around extremely fast, saw me, and jumped to the side, scrambling as she put a barrier around her and sprinting through the woods, branches smacking her barrier, and once that had fallen, her face. I lost sight of her for a second as she gained a magical burst of speed, but I sniffed out her location using her sweat. Okay, so she was perspiring. That meant she was really tired now. I believe perspiration is the mortal response to elevated body temperatures, right?

Or was that the response to fear? Both perhaps? Yes, that sounds about right.

I have to give her credit, Amanthe's resolve to 'escape death' was _pretty damn__ impressive_. I chased her for a good hour, going full speed to make up for my size, and she still hadn't given up. Several times she outright collapsed and I pounced to pin her under me and end the game, but she just rolled out of the way and got running again.

Why couldn't she have been _this _enduring when we were escaping Stormwind?

Was she really that much more afraid of me?

Amanthe's breathing was coming in ragged gasps, and I could vaguely see how red her face was with pumping blood. Her skin glistened with sweat, reflecting the sun's rays. I was starting to tire as well, one hour of continuous running was bound to do that. Finally, Amanthe collapsed against a rock.

"I, I can't" She started wheezing. I pounced on her from the woods, planting my legs around Amanthe, not actually pinning her. She looked up at me, and quickly looked away, not daring to look me in the eyes(Not like I would have minded, she _is_ my friend). I noticed that her face was bleeding from where the branches had smacked her as she plowed desperately through them. I felt a pang of regret, which was quickly lost in the guilty pleasure from the chase. I relaxed my death glare, and bent down to lick the blood off of her face and to clean the wounds. The saliva of many animals had infection-killing properties, only mortal saliva didn't. Wonder why. Amanthe tensed when I did, probably thinking I was going to eat her. I got off of her and laid down next to her, a stupid grin on my face. Eventually Amanthe's breathing slowed down.

"I-I h-hate y-you s-so m-much", she finally rattled/breathed out, no doubt realizing what my chase had actually been.

"The exercise will help you, just relax, and get your breath back. Also, if it's not to hard to talk, why did you have so much stamina when I chased you, and not nearly as much as when we had to get out of Stormwind?"

"W-well, t-the guard-ds would-d hav-ve j-just w-wanted t-to kill me, d-done and d-done. You, I f-figured b-being e-eaten would have b-been a m-much w-worse way to go" I noticed that as she kept talking she started stuttering less. Good, she was recovering.

"Amanthe, didn't you find it odd I didn't use any fire?"

"I j-just thought you w-wouldn't h-have wanted m-me burned, or cause a f-forest f-fire" I chuckled.

"True, a forest fire would be bad. Oh, and I believe that makes the score one for you, one for me?" Despite her exhaustion and residual terror, Amanthe managed a smile, and slid lower down the rock.

"I'll get back at y-you, just you w-wait" I raised my head like a curious cat would.

"Get _back_ at me? That was me getting back at YOU for the mud!"

"Y-you have the sickest idea of r-revenge if you think that chase makes us e-even" Her smile vanished, and she forced herself to stand, swaying horribly and toppling over. I managed to get there and support her, her legs shaking violently and threatening to collapse any second. I felt another pang of regret. I _did_ go a little overboard with that chase, didn't I? Okay, VERY overboard. I lowered myself.

"Get on, we have a Kingslayer to outrun" Amanthe didn't so much as get on so much as collapse on. I easily trotted over to the lake, and picked up her dropped water supplies, the bag stolen from Stormwind a reminder as to _how bloody close_ we had gotten to dieing. I grasped it in my fangs and slung it over my back, Amanthe weakly grabbing it as I let go. I took to the skies slowly, as not to drop the limp sack that was my best friend. I looked around at the noon sky. The purple-shell was just as blue as it was in Stormwind, the wild swinging weather after the Cataclysm turning the usually winter days warm and hot. Not that I would know. I've only ever known Cataclysm weather.

I kept flying east until the sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, and by then I had reached the Redridge mountain range. I yawned, looking around at the peaks, and setting down on one who's incline was relatively flat. I briefly retracted to my mortal form to place Amanthe down, and then changed back. It had felt good, being myself for the whole day. It was refreshing, to say the least. I sighed, and laid myself down on my stomach. I closed my eyes, and after an hour where I tossed and turned relentlessly and restlessly on the peak, fell asleep

* * *

><p>Dreams are almost never just dreams.<p>

And that sucks, because sleep is supposed to be a time away from reality.

You see, the Green Flight just _has_ to make it complicated. Sometimes they're flashbacks, sometimes premonitions, sometimes you are seeing what somebody else was doing in the pass, sometimes what they are doing at that very moment, and sometimes they really ARE just dreams.

That second to last one is what I got that night. I was with that orc, riding on an armored wolf with silver/brown fur, bounding down the roads of Elwynn forest, watching through her eyes as the world moved up and down, forwards, up and down, forwards, over and over. Next to her, riding a ridiculous looking blue-painted metal plain-strider, was a gnome female with short pink hair, a staff glowing a temperamental blue at the tip, and ice blue robes that seemed to leave a chilled fog behind her as she rode. She looked over at me, at the orc.

"You sure she's this way, Aruen?" The orc looked to the right, at a draenei male clutching the reins of a large, armored blue elekk, wearing gleaming gold armor with a short mace and shield slung over his back. The way his golden armor curved around, he almost looked like he was wearing banana fruits. He held a hand to his forehead crest, closing his eyes. After a second he nodded.

"Absolutely certain. The stench of the twilight flight's energies are impossible to mistake" The orc turned her head back to the road ahead, glancing briefly down, and I saw she was wearing the same armor when I first met her. She tightened her fists around the wolves' reins, her radiated anger prompting a snarl from the beast.

"I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill the cultist, then I am going to tie the drake down and let her starve and thirst to death in front of her friend's corpse" My dream-throat clenched at _that_ mental image. The gnome looked up.

"Um, Kolkna, that _may _be taking it a little bit too far" The orc whipped her head at the gnome, snarling.

"You didn't have your friend die, mage. Shut up" The gnome looked down.

"Believe it or not, I've lost friends too, Kolkna. But did I go to seek revenge? No. Did I want to torture their killers into madness by roasting their minds with arcane barrages? Oh yes, but I didn't, because to do so would be to sink to _their_ level. Don't sink to the drake's level, that's all I'm asking you. I'll help you get revenge, but no more than that"

"You haven't lost a friend as close as Shat'a was, Frizzle" The gnome, Frizzle, fingered something on her neck I hadn't noticed before, a small locket.

"You'd be surprised, Kolkna, you'd be surprised. Like I said, I'll help you get revenge, but if you try to torture the drake, or anything crazy..." She held up her small hand, tiny blue arcs of lightning crackling around it. "You remember our last sparring session, don't you?" Kolkna grunted and looked forward. I felt her anger pulsing around my mind in waves, not making me angry but very evident that _she_ was. She turned her head to the draenei, Aruen.

"What about you? Hmm? Who's side are you on?" The Aruen seemed lost in thought for a moment, before responding.

"Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. That was what one of my trainers taught me, even though I never took it far enough to aid me in battle like he did. Tell me, my friend, how would you compare the loss of Shat'a to something physical?" Kolkna looked down at her wolves' saddle, unclenching her fists.

"It was like I was back in Mimiron's workshop. The flames from the self-destruct mechanism burning around me, the sharp smell of ozone from the tank portion's electrical outputs, the raw power from the VX-001 cannon searing my armor to the point where it burned my flesh. _That_ is what it felt like" Aruen nodded.

"Then it is only righteous to inflict the same pain on the drake, but that would only be true if the drake attacked you. From what you have been telling me, the drake acted in self-defense. And furthermore, it could have not known of your bond. YOU, however, are going out for an offense, and you know the bonds between drakes and their riders"

"That cultist was no rider" Kolkna ground her teeth on each other.

"Riders fall off. Kolkna, the only way to make things right would be a quick death for both the drake and the cultist, nothing more" Kolkna's head snapped back to Aruen, glaring daggers.

"Let me make this very clear, paladin. I will not be denied my vengeance. I do not wish to 'make things right'. I do not wish to simply seek revenge. I want that drake to _suffer_. And nor you nor ANYONE else will stop me" Aruen sighed.

"I'd go to the ends of the world for you, Kolkna" He grinned. "Indeed I already have, in Netherstorm. I'd do it again. I simply give you advice on what would be the most righteous course of action" He paused a moment. "Turn left" The trio did so. They were at the lake. They stopped, and Aruen got off of his elekk, patting its trunk before walking to the shoreline. He put his hand in the water, deep in concentration. "They have gone to the Redridge mountains, and are currently stationary" He looked at the moon, before snapping his eyes back to me. "The drake knows we are here. It is dreaming" Kolkna's eyes widened in shock.

"What? How?"

"I do not entirely know how, but I do know the drake is experiencing your perspective as it dreams this very second" I felt Kolkna's fury burning white hot as she spoke to me.

"So, drake, you would piggyback on my mind after what you have done? Have you so little respect?" It was an accident! I wasn't trying to! "Let's move! We need to get to the drake before it wakes up and escapes, now that it knows where we are!" Not if I wake up first! I force my breathing to quicken. The dream faded, the outlines of both what I saw and my thoughts blurring, and I woke up.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	16. Chapter 16:Percieving

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>I looked down at the lake passing below us, tiny waves visible from even this high up. I looked down and sighed, bored out of my mind, the effort of flapping my wings long ago being given to my subconscious for the time being. Even Amanthe was still, looking vacantly into the sky. I had been flying for six hours after waking her up screaming 'we have to go now right now NOW!'. The sun was only just peaking over the horizon, and I yawned, lethargic in the cold air as I was, even though Amanthe's body heat was warming me up marginally.<p>

If I hadn't been so incredibly bored I would've really enjoyed the view. The entire ground was a muddy, clay red, dotted here and there with sparse vegetation and a few trees here and there. The mountains rose all around the edges, encasing the low-laying areas like a bowl. The lake was cut off a few miles ahead of me, pinched into a narrow, furious stream teaming with rapids by two mountains with a narrow gorge between them. The village by the lake, Lakeshire(Go figure), was noticeably larger than Goldshire, but it's population was much, much sparser. If I had to guess I would say it had a population of around sixteen-hundred.

I had flown very high up, they didn't see me as I was half-obscured by low-laying clouds, thick and gray, covering the world like a blanket. I flew right through the bottom of it, the wisps of liquid in the air streaming around me and Amanthe. The Redridge mountain range wasn't beautiful, but it wasn't ugly, and indeed, if I wasn't bored I would have enjoyed it.

As it was though, I was bored out of my mind. I sighed again. The Kingslayers were traveling by ground. I pondered on how they were going to keep up with me. I needed roughly the same amount of rest as they did, but the orc, Kolkna, was burning in hatred, hatred towards _me_. She wouldn't rest as much as I did, and if what Amanthe told me was right, she wouldn't need to be rested to kill us, even by herself. Still, she did have a mage riding with her. And the paladin seemed to be able to follow my trail extremely well. The mage would be able to teleport them to me should they find out where I was going, and would also make them not need to stop for food and water. All in all, it would be pretty close. I could only hope I could get Amanthe to the plaguelands and separate from her before they find me. Hopefully when they do, she won't die for my mistake.

Of course, I'd rather have them _not_ find me in the first place.

I sighed in boredom. I got another idea.

"Amanthe, hold on tight"

"Why? What, what exactly are you going to do?"

"Face it, we are both bored. I'm going to fix that"

"Um, okay?" Amanthe grabbed onto my neck tightly, but not so that I would choke and die.

"Hold on really tight and, um, try not to scream"

"Scream, what do you mean by scr-AAAAAAAH!" In that instant I stopped flapping my wings and went into a ninety-degree dive towards the water. Amanthe's scream was ringing in my ear, but despite the disorientation that came with it I extended my wings to catch the air, pulling up above the water, the air I had been pushing down slamming into the water and releasing two streams of water out to the sides. I pulled up to a good height above the water and did something Amanthe probably never forgave me for.

I did a few barrel rolls.

By the time I ended them I figured Amanthe wouldn't be able to handle more without regurgitating, and I was not looking forward to having the contents of her stomach all over my scales, so I stopped doing tricks and started flying slow and straight. She leaned against my neck, breathing heavily.

"How are you holding up?" She took several more breaths.

"I can handle it"

"Are you sure? I don't want you to regurgitate on my back"

"I won't" I smiled, even though she wouldn't see it. Then I flew straight up for distance to do another dive. I pulled back out of that one too, using my momentum to sail through the air, flying in loops tilted at angles that should have been impossible, Amanthe staying largely silent the entire time, except for when I pulled a maneuver she wasn't prepared for, which made her scream. I leveled back out, now one mile from the mountains that 'pinched' the lake.

"Hold on tight!"

"What, what are you going t-UGH!" That last part was because at that point I flipped my body around. The sky was the ground, the ground was the sky, the mountains were stalactites. I forced my wings to billow inside-out, flexing the weaker muscles on the bones that stretched through the webbing.

I was flying upside down.

A stream of fluids flew up at the edge of my field of vision. I groaned.

"Amanthe..." She barely replied.

"Sorry. I was not expecting you to do, well, that" I flipped myself back over, Amanthe still clutching my neck. I looked up, noticing we had arrived at the mountains. I angled myself up, each wing beat increasing our altitude as I made a spiral around the mountain to it's top.

"Amanthe, remember what you have to do?"

"Yes. We are being transferred north to the Highlands, and we need water to be able to last through the Steppes and Badlands"

"Where are we being transferred too?"

"Grim Batol"

"What's your name?"

"Amanthedamus"

"What is the password to be granted access to the cult's records?"

"Shur'nab N'zoth" I pulled around to the ruined castle holding the Blackrock. Their loyalty to Nefarion was strained by distance, but they would still aid us for, as far as they knew, being on their master's father's side. I hoped. I had never actually encountered them before. Almost before we even landed a few grunts wielding simple axes had formed a ring around us. I hissed at Amanthe one last, 'Good luck', and went to looking at the orcs with sideways glances. Amanthe found one that appeared to be the leader, one with more armor than the others, and did a quick bow.

The orcs of this region had odd gray skin, making them look almost undead. They had the same eyes most other orcs did, varying colors, blue being extremely rare, especially among these ones. The orc leader took one look at me, then back at Amanthe, I mean, Amanthedamus.

"Yes, cultist? What is your purpose here?"

"We are being transferred to the Highlands. We need water to be able to survive the Burning Steppes and the Badlands to get to Grim Batol without _dieing_" The orc nodded, rubbing a small beard on his chin.

"Come with me, I will help you get your supplies. I will not be held accountable by the cult for delaying a transfer to Grim Batol, of all places. Follow me" He started towards the keep, and turned back towards Amanthe. "NOW!" His tone of voice made her jump a little, but she started to walk after him, leaving me with the grunts. I glared at them, sending a clear message; Beat it. I wouldn't be able to help Amanthe, she would be on her own. I just hoped she could pull the cultist thing off convincingly. Of course, my presence during her arrival would probably help. I walked around, looking for a rock to sun myself on. The last time I had, I was interrupted, rather rudely I might add, by a mud ball. I finally found a slab of granite, just large enough for me, jutting out of the earth at a slight angle. Well enough. I walked over to it and laid down.

Unfortunately, thanks to the weather, there wasn't much sun at all. It was rather chilly, and only Amanthe's body heat while she had been on my back gave me the energy to keep going. I grunted, frustrated by the fact that the rock was actually colder than the air around me, and got up. I glided a short distance down to the lake, taking several deep gulps of water. I heard a slight fluttering of wings next to me. I whipped around and saw a black whelp, setting itself down next to the lake, drinking from it. After drinking, it sighed. I couldn't help it. Call it emerging paternal instincts with being an adult(Even if a young one), call it mortal personality rubbing off on me, I talked to him.

"What's wrong?" The whelp glared at me like I had just stepped on it's tail.

"My flight is going _extinct_. That's what's wrong. Hmmph. Those reds can just _try_ to kill me. I'm not going down without a fight" Well, this was news.

"What do you mean, the black flight is going extinct?" The whelp cocked its head at me.

"Our last brood-mother, Sintharia, just died at the hands of those mortal_ scum_" I sighed, thinking of Amanthe.

"Not all mortals are so bad. What's your name?" He glared at me.

"Easy for you to say. The twilight flight will probably_ never_ die out. The cult will hang on by it's lifelines, steal eggs from other flights, and then you're back" The whelp shook his head. "Not for us. We're being monitored every day. Every female is being killed. We're being purged. Once the females are gone, it'll be us next. As for my name, I'm Singe. Not like it matters" Singe spat a tiny fireball into the lake, sending up some steam. I heard something off in the distance. It was like a rumbling, like the ground itself were twisting around in its slumber. I raised my head, cocking it so my right ear-plate could take in more of the noise.

"Do you, hear that?"

"Hear what?" Singe froze, obviously hearing it too. He got up, slight panic showing through the whelp's otherwise impassive features, and he flew back to wherever he had come from. I got up on my feet, looking around. The air was shimmering. This could _not_ be good. I got up and flew back to the Blackrock orcs. The air shimmers seemed to follow me there. I reviewed what it could be.

1. It could be the mage following Kolkna opening a portal to my location, in which case I'm screwed.

2. It could be the cult opening a portal here for whatever reason, in which case Amanthe might be screwed, but not definitely.

3. It could be the lack of wards that I had overheard Jeziba and the bronze talking about, how once I left they wouldn't be able to keep them up and I might be attacked. In which case I'm probably screwed.

The shimmers condensed into three portals, the kind the Epoch Hunter had appeared out of. Looks like it was number three. The portals swirled around, and the orcs ran forward, axes at the ready. A dragonspawn came out, one of the female ones, followed by a single male dragonspawn out of each of the other two portals. Both were the same shade of gray-black the Epoch Hunter was, with the same silver cracks that I now knew to be burning hot. I wasn't messing around this time. I knew what these... things were capable of. I instantly let a shadowflame breath at the nearest dragonspawn, a male with a dagger in his hands that seemed to ripple, sometimes of night elf origin, sometimes dwarven, Vrykul, and Scourge. He caught fire, the blue flames attaching to him. He screamed, and ran back through the portal, it closing behind him. The female hissed, arcane energy starting to ripple between her hands.

"Go for her neck! NOW!" Her voice echoed the same way the Epoch Hunter's had. The other dragonspawn charged forward, flanked by several black-silver cracked whelps that had emerged from the same portal. I let out another shadowflame breath, catching all of them except for the dragonspawn, who had maneuvered out of the way much too fast to be possible, it looking like he had left himself behind as he went. The whelps screeched, their voices rising in pitch and their bodies fluttering faster and faster, like they were accelerated, before dropping dead, covered in blue fire.

The caster thrust out her hands, a coiled stream of yellow energy smashing into me. It didn't hurt. It didn't knock me back. It just felt cold. Then it happened.

* * *

><p>All of existence compressed, every village, every world, every reality and time-line in all of existence fell onto me, the vastness of it all being too much for me to handle, so I tried hard to focus on small things like birds, dragons, worlds(Which were small by comparison). It seemed like all existence was pressed into something the size of my egg, myself including, shrunk down and trying to expand back out, like a coiled spring, but they didn't. All of existence, thousands upon millions upon trillions upon vigintillions(Yes that is a real word) of tons of matter crushing against my body, incomprehensible energy from an infinite amount of stars burning through my body all in a space no bigger than a whelp.<p>

Then, just like I had felt all reality crush around me, it flew away. I was floating in a deep, empty void. Then I felt it. Universes. Stars, planets, demons, mortals, immortals, rocks, constellations, nebulae, incomprehensible distances from me, an infinite number of them stretching in all directions around me, and I sensed how far they were. The distances were incomprehensible to my mind, yet in that instant which stretched out to eternity, I comprehended it. I gaped. I was insignificant. Nothing I ever did would matter in the least. I was nothing. We all were nothing. Less than nothing. I could destroy the entire universe, and it still wouldn't matter because there was an _infinite_ number of universes. It was all futile...

Reality changed. I no longer comprehended the distances, no longer sensed reality around me. I was just in a vast, truly infinite void with an infinite amount of matter in it and still room for an infinite amount of emptiness. I felt the whole of existence spin around me, and I was in one of the other universes.

In this universe, I was on a different world, looking at it from maybe thirty meters up. There was no grass, no flowers, just a few trees here and there with dirt sealed off by metal. Almost the entire world was blanketed by this black tar with yellow stripes on it, making roads that bent into each intersection with sharp ninety degree angles. Buildings with rectangular bases hundreds of meters wide stretched up to the sky, made of metal, thousands of windows in each of them. There were human whelps in armor and orange clothing fighting on every street, distorted metal boxes pushed to the buildings, the mortals fighting a seemingly infinite tide of... monsters.

One monster seemed like a human woman, but her skin was green and scaly like one of Ysera's flight, but with two snake trunks for legs. An enormous black wolf leaped over the encroaching tide, before being struck with an arrow and bursting into golden powder. The human whelps fought well, but the monsters had an endless number of forces, and slowly they suffered casualties, slowly, over the course of hours they tired and fell back to a simply ENORMOUS building, a spire reaching high into the sky. I noticed one of the mortals fought as though possessed, spinning around, jabbing and blocking and rolling with a gleaming bronze sword almost faster than my eyes could keep up. Slowly, the night went on, a weird, single white moon crossing their sky as fires started to burn in several of the metal leviathans of buildings. A female whelp yelled,

"Hold your lines!" Their battle was hopeless, there were simply too many, and however well they fought, they were losing energy, people, and hope.

There was a sound like glass shattering, and the scene changed, the reality flying away to be replaced by another one.

I was in Stormwind, the Cathedral district, and downpour was heavy. Almost as heavy as the day the Epoch hunter had nearly killed me. A woman in a cloak and robe pulled over her head stormed out of the Cathedral, her black hair almost completely hidden and gray eyes scanning the area. The great doors slammed behind her, deafening me. She stormed around, me somehow following her unnoticed.

"Andy!" The rain nearly drowned out her voice. She stormed around, completely soaked. "Andy!" She walked past a female gnome with white robes and golden hair, looking uncomfortably similar to the bronze dragon following me. The gnome spoke.

"To find a boy, you have to think like a boy" The woman stopped, and glared down at her. "I could not help but overhear, my apologies for startling you, Lady" Lady, lady. That seemed so familiar in this context.

"You speak not a word of this to anyone else," replied 'Lady'. The gnome bowed.

"Of course not, I would never endanger the boy's life" Lady sneered, and spoke loudly over the roar of the weather.

"And just what are you doing in the rain in the middle of the night?" Her voice was so harsh, it sounded like it could rot meat on its own.

"Giving advice" was the reply.

"Oh, pray, tell" Lady clearly did not like this gnome, who simply smiled.

"Humans, I find, are an odd culture, uncomfortable around the shorter races for, eh, obvious reasons". She cocked her head sideways, entering into a glaring match with Lady. "But I find the more I think like a human, the more they treat me as if I _am_ one. They forget I'm not human. It's a nice little trick"

"Is there a point to this?", Lady spat.

"To find a boy, think like a boy. If you were a runaway prince, where would you go? What would you look for? What is your purpose? If you were too proud to come back, who would you go to for help? What are you attracted to about the world outside you've never seen?"

"Well done, _gnome_. You are not entirely useless" The gnome laughed, and that seemed to make Lady freeze like a mage had placed her in an ice block.

The scene changed again.

I don't know how I knew, but I was underground. The room I was in was roughly thirty meters across, a hemisphere made of black metal squares suspended by an unknown force. A glass tube as big as me was in one corner, shattered, and the floor and some of the squares on the walls were covered in a white fluid. Fire burned outside the hemisphere, slowly rising. Two large blue rectangles hung on opposite sides of the room, a black number on them counting rapidly down, 1:37:53, 1:36:26, so on. In the middle was... I don't know what it was.

It looked vaguely like a mortal hanging from the ceiling by their feet, with their hands tied to their waist, but it was enormous, over ten meters tall, and swinging around like it had a life of its own. A metal ball made up the 'head', and the ball itself was made of several sections that separated from each other and rejoined continuously, always in motion around a glowing, slightly broken blue circle making up the 'face'. Orange squares about a meter on each side, eight of them, were around it, making a sort of shield in front of the 'face', four on top, four on the bottom. What was keeping them there I didn't know.

A female human was running around the gel, weird shoes on her feet giving her steps a spring, and she was clad in orange material. Her skin was bleeding in several places, her black hair smudged with blue, orange and white fluids, and she looked simply exhausted by the way her feet were shaking with each step. In her right hand she held what could only vaguely be called a 'gun'. But it was white, and curved smoothly, with three spikes on its end. She pulled the trigger, the gun's kick threatening to make her collapse. The white fluid on the wall-squares she shot was displaced, an orange circle opening on it. She shot the gun at the gel on the floor in front of her, a blue circle opening there. I looked through the blue circle, and I saw the giant... thing and woman from a different perspective. Oh. Some weird two-way portal.

The machine swung around so that its 'face' was pointing towards the woman. From near its top red orbs began shooting at the woman's location. I heard an accented male's voice coming from somewhere.

"All I wanted to do, was make everything. Better. For me. All you had to do, was solve a couple of hundred SIMPLE tests, for a few years, AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE _THAT_, could you?" A piece of the 'ceiling' collapsed onto the floor, nearly crushing the woman. The giant's head was jittering as the voice came out. Oh. The giant, the machine was talking. The orbs it shot sailed into the blue hole, out of the orange hole on the wall, and hitting the machine's orange squares, which seemed to function as shields, exploding like bombs as they hit it, every blast dissipating harmlessly. As the last red bomb exploded, the shields moved around the machine, temporarily cocooning it from all directions. Another male voice came out of nowhere, but this one was much higher pitched, and not so much accented as synthetic and hyper.

"Gotta go to space. Yeah. Gotta go to space" The machine replied, it moving around like it were shaking its head.

"NOBODY IS GOING TO SPACE, MATE!" The shields moved back to their position infront, and more red bombs started to fly out at the female.

* * *

><p>The spell broke. I was exactly where I was before, my head bowed down and my wings out to the sides. I took a deep breath. What in the name of the titans, was THAT?<p>

I shook my head and fired a quick blast at the dragonspawn caster, catching her in the face. She didn't scream. It seemed like her mouth was sealed tight. She ran away, arms flailing as the flames slowly killed her. I looked around, recovering from the daze of the, of the whatever just happened to me. The orcs were engaged with a few other of the cracked dragonspawn, winning, albeit with difficulty. I saw Amanthe, a beam of black energy pouring out of her hand and into a whelp's head, frying its brain from the inside. Okay, so that explains why the dragonspawn I flamed didn't scream. I stumbled, still disoriented. This was hopeless. It was useless. We didn't matter. We did-

I shook myself out of it. Maybe it didn't matter IN THE LEAST in the grand scheme of things, but I still didn't want to die. I flew up and dove down at something that had just emerged out of the last remaining portal. Just my luck it was a drakonid, cracked and bleeding energy, black shimmers echoing behind it and a very large spear, with both ends capable of spearing, in his hands.

I landed my claws on his head.

Instantly he brought up his spear in a wide arc, catching me in the head and throwing me off of him into the portal.

I gasped when I was inside, a vast black emptiness with a floor of sand, and jumped back out. The drakonid was waiting for me, and instantly charged me, picking me up in one claw, holding me up, barely letting me breathe. He was twice my size. I was dangling, choking, stretched out to my full length and he was still twice as tall. I brought flames into my crop. The drakonid's face twisted into a smiling grimace, slowly tightening his grip. I wasted no time in blasting him. He wasn't as skilled as the Epoch Hunter, the fireball didn't slow down as it approached him. It caught him on the face, the shock making him drop me.

I summoned my strength and jumped at the flailing male, knocking me over. I raised my tail and smacked it against his armor, earning a roar in pain from both of us as the armor incinerated my tail before I could bring it up. Fine then. I took a deep breath, bringing up the rest of my flames, not that much after I used a lot on the whelps, and sprayed them all along his body. I got off and continued the stream, twilight flames attaching to his side, his stomach, his tail, and then he vanished, a whoosh being the only indication of it occurring. The portal closed. The orcs had killed the rest of the dragonspawn.

I walked up to Amanthe.

"What was that... when did you... how long was I..."

"In that yellow coil thing?" I nodded, the feeling of hopelessness, uselessness, creeping back up on me. I forced it back down.

"Yes, that. It felt like hours, and the things I saw..."

"What did you see?" I looked up at her.

"_Everything_. How long was it?"

"I saw you from the, uh, castle. You were only in it for a few seconds before I silenced them" An orc ran up to the leader.

"Roknak, I spotted three enemies riding this way full speed" No. It couldn't be. If I really was only in the spell for a few seconds, how could they be here already? It shouldn't have been possible! "I believe they are all, all Kingslayers" Oh. Great. I walked to Amanthe.

"That's our cue to go. Do you have the water?" She nodded.

"It's in an enchanted flask. Holds enough water for both of us to get all the way to the Loch, if what they say is true" I nodded.

"Excellent" I lowered myself to the ground, and Amanthe got on. She looked at the orc one last time.

"Thank you for your generosity. I'll be sure to send whoever's in charge of the cult now a good word about you" The orc bowed, and returned to his post.

"Hanging on?"

"Hanging on" I ran off the mountainside, plummeting a few meters before I stretched out my wings, angling through the narrow rapids. I emerged about an hour later, the water below me falling down into a huge waterfall. I looked down at the stream of water, chuckling as an idea formed in my mind. I soon roared in pain when something started tugging on one of my horns painfully.

"DON'T even think about it. Maybe you can't get wet, but I can" I sighed.

"Yes, brood-mother" I turned around and set myself to fly north. I checked my internal compass. Yup, north. Amanthe shuddered on my back.

"I have never been more afraid in my life. Those orcs were terrifying. I thought for sure they would find me out!"

"Amanthe, you were completely convincing. If I didn't know better, I would have bought it"

"And then there's those dragonspawn that attacked you. What, exactly did you see in that spell they had on you?" I stayed silent for a moment.

"I felt all of reality crush into me, like all existence was compressed into a space the size of my shell, all the weight pushing me, all the stars burning me. Then I felt how big reality was. It was, it was limitless. It really put things into perspective. I mean, someone could destroy the entire _universe_ and it wouldn't matter at all, because there are an infinite number of them. It's just big, big beyond imagining. And I saw other realities, other universes. I don't even know _what_ I saw in those" Amanthe leaned over my neck, scratching my crest.

"It's nothing, alright? Maybe we are insignificant in the universe"

"Not maybe, definitely"

"Okay, so we are. But we still feel pain. We still feel emotion. We don't owe the universe anything, we owe it to _ourselves_ to make our lives the best we can for ourselves" I thought about it for a while.

"You're right. But, it was still so, so horrible to feel. Can you imagine feeling an infinite number of things of all sizes an infinite distance from you?"

"No, I can't"

"Neither can I! But that spell _forced_ me too. I'm amazed I'm still sane"

"Just shake it off, alright? That's probably what it was designed to do. Just shake it off" I shuddered again. I looked up at the sky, trying to imagine the vast distances of the Great dark beyond. I couldn't, yet some part of my already had. I squeezed my eyes shut, shoving the feeling of the entirety of the cosmos spread out before me into the recesses of my mind, removing the lingering pain of having infinite energy burning through a space the size of my egg. If that spell didn't give you perspective, nothing did. I spotted a clearing, just starting up the mountainsides, and extended my wings, gliding down towards it. This close to the Steppes, it was temperate, and the red rocks had some basalt in places.

"Amanthe, I need to rest. And eat, and drink" Another pause, which I assume was Amanthe nodding.

"Good idea" I settled down on the clearing, letting my wings relax and fold in naturally. Amanthe got off, and stretched, releasing another series of popping noises. She walked over to a few trees. "Um, could you, uh, turn around?"

"Why?"

"Well, I need to, you know, well, um, how should I put this... excrete waste" Amanthe was stumbling over word, and if I looked closely enough I could see a little twitch above her left eye. I waited a while before replying.

"Are _all_ mortals this embarrassed about basic bodily functions?" She threw her hands in the air, obviously desperate to end this conversation.

"YES! Please, just, uh, turn around. Why, when do you, um, go?"

"I 'went', as you put it, on the flight over here" Amanthe disappeared into the trees. "Well, I'm going to hunt while you're in there. Want me to bring you some meat?"

"Ungh. Sure, just, just GO!" I shook my head. Why was she so embarrassed? Everyone needs to excrete waste, why does she seem to think differently? I walked down the slope cautiously, resting my wings, balancing on my feet as I made my way down. I picked up the scent of a... yes! A boar! Luck was on my side today! I pounced on the thing, but I was certainly _not_ expecting for another boar to ram into my, tusks piercing slightly into my hide. I bawled in pain and whipped around, smacking my tail into the sow with so much force it went flying into a tree and cracked its skull right open. I jumped over to the other one, pinning it to the ground and biting its neck, killing it instantly. So small, so insignificant, just like everything else, including me...

I shook the memories of the spell off, and ate the boars. I licked the blood off of my jaws, moaning in ecstasy from the taste, and went searching for some more. All in all, I ate about five of them, a good meal. I gripped the sixth one in my jaws and climbed back up to the clearing where Amanthe was. She was sitting on the ground, her legs crossed over each other, eyes closed in concentration. I put the dismembered boar down on the ground, waiting for her to come back out of whatever she was doing. Her eyes snapped open, and she took a deep breath of air.

"I can't find them, the Kingslayers. I tried to find them by jumping around the perspectives of other animals, but I couldn't find them" She spotted the boar. "What. The. Hells"

"It's boar, I told you I would bring you some meat" Amanthe grimaced.

"Oh. Right. I'll be right back" Amanthe walked back over to the woods, and retched. After a few more minutes, she came back with some dry tree branches, and set them in a pile, and looked at me expectantly.

"What do you want me to, oh" I brought what few flames I had remade into my crop, and fired a pebble-sized fireball into the wood pile, sending the entire thing up in blue fire almost immediately, which soon faded away as the magic dissipated, leaving only regular orange fire. Truth be told, I was nervous. The fire could easily lead the Kingslayers here, and after the time I had spent hunting, it was nighttime, and the fire would shine like a beacon. Still, Amanthe got a stick and held a chunk of the boar meat above the fire. I whined for the loss. It would taste good for a human, that I knew from experience, but from my current perspective she was _ruining_ it. After a couple minutes of roasting, Amanthe took the meat off and bit into it. She chewed for a while, before swallowing. She looked at me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do you, uh, want any?" I shook my head.

"I've just eaten five others, I'm not hungry" Amanthe nodded, and repeated the process. The silence was so thick I could have cut it with a claw. "The black flight is going extinct" Amanthe looked up from her burnt, I'm sorry, _cooked_ boar.

"What do you mean?"

"They don't have any brood-mothers left. Any females are being killed before they can become ones. The other flights are wiping them out" Amanthe traced a finger on the ground, putting her head in an open palm.

"It won't matter. Unless they can find a way to kill Deathwing, it's all in vain" I shook my head.

"I have my doubts about that. Deathwing already died, but he just came back. He is the aspect of death. No matter how many times they kill him, he will just. Keep. Coming. Back" Amanthe dug around in her pack, pulling out a water-skin.

"You, uh, said you needed to drink, right?" I nodded. "Well, this is the, uh, enchanted flask"

"How am I going to..."

"I, don't know. Maybe you could do that shapeshifting thing?"Well, I _could_ do that. I relaxed, letting the magic flow through me again. This was getting easier and easier to do. In no time I had completed the illusion, and had taken the black flask, drinking from it. The water was cool and refreshing, and it felt incredible as it flowed down my throat. After drinking my fill, I put it down, and let my illusion go. Amanthe continued eating, and once she was done, we decided to call it a night. My wings needed rest, since they weren't exactly used to carrying the extra weight. When I had said this, Amanthe looked at me like I had just said some grievous insult to her. I laid down on my stomach, my head resting on the ground. Amanthe curled up against my side, and I draped a wing around her; I would keep her warm, and she would keep me warm.

Because that's what friends do, they help each other.

I woke up to Amanthe yelling in my ear-plate. Needless to say, I was wide awake in an instant. I stretched out my claws, much like a cat would, slowly reactivating my nerves. I looked at Amanthe.

"What? What is it?"

"The, the Kingslayers! I just saw them through a bluejay's eye! They'll be here any second we have to GO!" My pupils slitted even further in fear.

"Oh no" I got into the position, and Amanthe got on just in time. I smelled something in the air. Something like ozone...

"Amanthe get down!" Amanthe ducked just in time for two swirling orbs of blue energy to crash over her head and burn the mountainside. The gnome, Frizzle.

"Kolkna! There!" Said orc warrior burst out of the trees, wielding the same _huge, glowing_ sword. I quickly took off, barely avoiding a sword cutting my stomach open. She swore, and jumped straight up, slamming the flat of the sword into my head, stunning me and making me slip down. Of course. The dragonspawn that had attacked me slowed us down. We wouldn't have been caught otherwise. Even if we beat them, we were still going to die to them. Speaking of dragons...

A female bronze dragon had climbed up to the top of the mountain and roared. This surprised the Kingslayers for a short time. That was all I needed. I flew up again, ignoring the throbbing pain in my head. The mage shot a salvo of arcane energy at me, striking me in my tail. It burned horribly, and shoved the air out of my lungs, but I flew up, taking air back in. Amanthe quickly weaved light around the burn, diminishing the pain. I got to the opposite end of the Redridge mountainside, and allowed myself to glide into the Burning Steppes. The bronze dragon was gone. Somewhere over the mountainside I heard a deafening,

"DAMN IT ALL! SHIT! I HATE THAT DRAKE!"

The Burning Steppes were stretched out before me. Miles of basalt plains, lava flows, and just plain burning hot things. The volcanic activity had actually held off the thick clouds in Redridge, turning them to air before they could so much as think of causing rain here. The ominous spire of Blackrock mountain loomed in the distance, but I wasn't going there. I didn't dare land for two reasons; one, the Kingslayers were RIGHT behind us. Two; the very ground in the Steppes could be deadly. It wasn't always such, but in some places an underground flow of magma got close enough to the surface to make the ground melt your flesh. The air was acrid and burned my nostrils, dry and heavy and filled with ash, and I could tell Amanthe felt the same. I only dared to stop on a small hill, the black rock jutting up. I tested it with a claw. Safe. Warm, but it was as cool as we would get.

Amanthe got off, panting.

"Oh light that was too close. Think we'll be safe here?" I looked back at the Redridge mountains.

"I can't tell. They're traveling by land, but they might have another trick up their sleeves. At any rate, it's hot here. I'll be able to fly a lot faster" Amanthe nodded.

"Good, good. That's good" She looked up at the sky, red with volcanic ash. The huge volcano in the distance rumbled. I shook my head. No. That volcano wasn't huge. It was tiny, infinitely insignificant in every way, shape and form-

I cleared the thoughts from my brain. Honestly, how had I emerged from _that_ with my mind intact? Amanthe wiped sweat from off of her brow. Not an hour in here, and she was already drenched in her own perspiration. This was not good.

Mortals removed excess body heat through perspiration, that was something I understood very well. Drakes, however, had a different way to remove body heat. It is converted to energy and stored in our crops for our breaths, making them hotter. For some, like the red, it helped, as their breaths burned already. For others, like the green and the twilight, who's breaths were poison and shadow, it didn't do much, even if it helped. For the blue and their frozen breaths, it was terrible. As it was, this had a side effect. Our breaths require food to create the substance, and the added heat made them diffuse, so it was harder to create a fireball, it would spread out and disperse within a meter of being launched.

I fired a dark blue fireball into the distance, to test this. Sure enough, it spread out into a shadowy haze almost immediately after being expelled. Amanthe took a deep drink from the flask of water.

"Well, ready to keep moving?" Amanthe coughed, clearing some smoke from her lungs.

"Ready" She got on my back. I noticed the motion was getting almost natural for her. I smiled. Then my face hardened. We had to get out of here, the sooner the better. The twilight weren't accustomed to high temperatures, either. The reds and blacks were. I would be suffering too. I licked my fangs. I would have to stop very often to keep myself hydrated, and there wasn't much in the way of food around here either, most of it either too small to make a good meal or too well adapted to this environment for me to kill.

The sooner we were out of this hellshole, the better.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Yes, vigintillion actually IS a word. It is one followed by sixty zeroes, or 10^60. A very, very big number.**

**Let's see if you can guess what the three alternate realities Selriona saw were.**


	17. Chapter 17:Back

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or it's sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Also, I want to say it now, in the event you haven't noticed the theme behind my chapters, each one is named after what Selriona _is _in that chapter. So chapter one she was an egg, it's called egg, chapter five she was hopeless, thinking she would die, it's called hopeless, etc. Just getting that out there, in case anyone didn't know the exact pattern.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I looked at the crumbling remains of the Bastion. The once blazing purple flames were reduced to a few embers on the ground, the metal spires were corroded and barely had enough magic on them to suspend the rock holding the portal entrance. The rock itself was tilted to the side, and the gate was flickering, the portal sometimes opening for a few seconds, before collapsing for a minute. The land below it, where the cult had been, was utterly abandoned. Nothing sentient there, and the purple rocks were beginning to fade back to the normal shade, vegetation nervously peeking in to see if it could claim some cracks in the tortured, corrupted soil. I flew over to the rock, sitting down on it. Amanthe got off, standing next to me, looking at the currently de-activated portal.<p>

"You don't need to come with me, you know" Amanthe put her hand on my neck.

"Yes, I do. You're my friend, I'm going to help you through whatever it is you need to see there. We're both in this together" The gate began to have a green light flickering in it.

"Together, right" The portal, green just like I remembered it, shuddered open, and almost immediately began to shudder, preparing to close. We both jumped right into it. The antechamber was almost exactly like I had remembered it. I walked forward slowly, looking out for the phase traps. There weren't any. The twisters were killed, probably cremated as well. I slowly walked forward, looking to and fro. The silence was terribly eerie, broken only by our steps. One of the arcs in a doorway broke off the hinge, falling down with a startling clang. Amanthe jumped up, before settling.

We both walked forward, turning the corner to Halfus' rookery. I gasped. There was NOTHING there. The lava pool was still. I flew over to it and looked down. There was no lava. It had cooled into stone. The Kingslayers had probably disposed of the bodies in there. I walked to the empty elementium cage, which used to hold several dozen green whelps, who had seen their brood-mother tortured into insanity before their eyes, before being dragged off to be used in some cultist ritual. There was an inscription on the cage door, which was hanging open limply, creaking.

WE'RE SORRY

I walked over to where the other captured drakes had been. The same inscription where the bronze and the storm drakes had been. The slate and nether drake holding spots, all with their chains shattered, were lacking them. I swallowed a lump in my throat. What did that mean, We're sorry?

Oh no.

I'd seen Halfus enslave the minds of a few drakes earlier so that they would be sacrificed easily, without fight. They could keep their mouths, talk of their own mind, but their bodies obeyed Halfus' will. Had... had the Kingslayers been forced to kill some of them? Had they... had they killed the whelps? Amanthe walked up to me, unaware of the horrifying realization I had come to.

"What happened here?" I bowed my head in respect for the captives. They didn't deserve that.

"There was an ettin here, Halfus Wyrmbreaker. He hunted down drakes for the cultists to use in rituals. He had five, well, thirteen, captives when I, when I left" I looked over to the far left corner. "A nether drake" I moved my head to the next spot. "A stone drake" I continued moving my head. "A storm drake" I hesitated at the cage. "There were several green _whelps_ in that cage. Their brood-mother came in with them. They saw Halfus torture her and eventually send her to be sacrificed"

"Light, that's, that's terrible" I nodded.

"It gets worse. Look at what's written on the cage" She walked over and knelt down, running a hand over it.

"I don't, understand"

"Halfus could enslave the minds of his captives. Make them do his bidding, like moving off to be sacrificed, killing themselves. Attacking Kingslayers" She took her hand off the cage.

"Oh no. They, they had to kill them, didn't they?" I bowed my head.

"Definitely" I didn't feel like I could point out the bronze drake too. The fate of the whelps was horrifying, to say the least. "I just hope that the nether and stone drakes managed to escape"

"Maybe they did"

"Maybe they died soon after"

"Maybe, but it's a war. There's still a chance they didn't, though"

"You're right. Come on, let's keep moving forward" I walked through the other doorway, the cult banners torn and withering, the lava pool cooled and hardened, the elementals having been reduced to the simple husks that had once contained their essences. The Bastion was disintegrating at an accelerated pace as the magic that gave it shape and substance drained away. I looked at one of the fire trails that seperated some parts of the chamber from the others, the lava faucets empty. The stairs down were crumbled. As I watched one of them imploded into the cooled lava far below.

"Are you, sure that's safe?" I put one paw on the stair, causing it to groan and shake, before I took my weight off.

"Not at all. Climb on, I'll take you down" I flew down the stairs with Amanthe, and when we reached the bottom, they released a groaning noise behind us. I turned back just in time to see them collapse in a pile of dust. The place was self-destructing. I walked slowly forward. I picked up the smell of something familiar, and leaned down to be certain. Sure enough, one of my flight had been here. Once before. Never again after me. I looked forward at the doorway infront of me. There was no doorway. It had completely collapsed on the spot, creating a pile of rubble. Amanthe walked up to it, tried to lift a boulder, and sighed.

"Great, now what?" I rolled my eyes as much as I could with slit pupils, and walked over to the pile. I reared up and placed my front legs on a boulder, rolling it out. I repeated the process with another, and another, until one was too stuck. Then Amanthe pitched in, making the boulder shudder with a spell, as it tried to levitate, loosening the other rocks to the point where I could roll them out. Eventually, the barrier was removed, and I squeezed through the opening, into an large, open-ended arena. Two open-ends on the edge led down to the now-solid lava pools. The arena was extremely elliptical, and the gate on the other end was smashed and collapsed, but not from decay, more like someone had sent large bursts of force at it to break through. My eyes drifted around the arena, and froze.

Valiona.

I ran over to her, jumping over several piles of collapsed roof, and bowed my body down near her head. She wasn't decayed at all. There wasn't anything in the Bastion to do that, nothing in the air, in the water, on the ground, nothing. Even moving through the portal completely obliterated anything that might cause decay. Valiona looked just like she had when she had died, of that I was certain.

I leaned down to her head, and closed her eyes. I choked on a breath, trying to hold back tears. I had known she was dead, but seeing her body was so, so much worse. I examined her. She was filled with cuts, holes from where arrows might've been pulled out, burns where spells probably crashed into her, no blood on the cuts, all of it having drained out prior, probably. I thought back to the short time I had been under her care. All the times she brought us meat, how often she complained about having to be stuck with us, after which she then went to do something she didn't _have_ to. As hard as I tried not to, I remembered a dream I had, while I was wounded on the mire of the Wetlands, a dream vision of Valiona yelling at me.

_"You are a failure, Selriona! You could've hidden behind a building on the rise, but no, you thought you __had to go to the wetlands! NOW LOOK WHERE YOU ARE!" _

I blinked hard, clearing the memory from my brain.

_You are a failure._

_You are a failure._

_Failure._

_Failure._

I took a deep breath, a tear falling onto the ground next to Valiona. Soon her body would cease to exist as the Bastion crumbled out of reality. I leaned down and nuzzled her head. She said she didn't care about us when she took care of me all the time. But all she had to do was feed us and protect us from mortals who stumbled on us. She did so much more. She went out of her way to teach us about the world, how to survive once she didn't have to deal with us. She did more then feed us, she gave us _food_. I didn't know it at the time, but she brought amazing kills for us, the strongest alphas, the bulkiest, meatiest, tastiest animals. She had to have cared about us to do all that.

Another tear fell onto the ground next to her, however hard I tried to hold them in. A small sob escaped my mouth. If I had asked her while she was alive, if I had realized it while she was alive, she probably would have said it was 'for the good of the flight'. I could practically hear her voice, towering above me. I managed a small smile. She always had too much pride for her own good. Amanthe walked up to me and scratched me under my jaw. However good it felt, I didn't care. Valiona, who had for all intents and purposes, been my brood-mother, was dead. Amanthe's voice was quiet, soothing, which helped me so much.

"That's Valiona, isn't it?" I leaned into her, pressing my head into her stomach, careful to avoid stabbing her with my nose horn.

"Yes" I choked back another sob, but the effort behind that let a few more tears escape. She stopped scratching me and started to pat my head slowly. Eventually I got control of my emotions again. I pulled away from Amanthe and turned towards the broken door. "Let's keep going. I have something to see here. I have to know if what Singe told me was true" I walked up to the door, and took one last look back at Valiona. I let one more tear drop from my eye, one last moment of weakness around her. The tears would be eradicated soon enough anyway.

The following corridor opened up to a simply gigantic chamber. I walked inside and was taken off guard by the energies still in there. Several elemental husks filled the room, and as I walked past them, I sometimes felt cold, warm, energy tingling over my scales, or like something was crushing me. I walked on, up the stairs. I trotted over to a spot on the raised platform, covered in soot, and still smelling of smoke and ash. No doubt, where Lord Ignacious had watched over the ascendancy process. I walked over to the other side, lowering my nostrils to the ground, and pulling back from the icy cold. It was frozen, and if I looked closely enough, I could still see bits of frost, crisscrossing over each other like a spider's web.

Lord Feludius's spot.

I shuddered, and looking up at the raised podiums, I flew over to one. I landed on it, and it groaned dangerously, tilting at an angle. I felt arcs of lightning flying over my scales, jumping between my claws, wind whistling between my fangs. No doubt, not in the least. Lord Arion's lingering presence. The podium groaned in thanks when I flew off of it to the other one.

The instant I set down on that one, however, it collapsed.

I let out a quick bawl of panic, and the next thing I know I'm on the ground, with a ton of boulders on my back. Amanthe sprinted over to me. I tried to wriggle out of it, but they had me pinned down. Amanthe pulled on it, grunting, but she only managed to pull one closer to my HEAD.

"Stop stop!" She did. "Alright, can you levitate them off of me?"

"I can try. Never tried to levitate so many though" Amanthe clenched her teeth, and quickly muttered the same word over and over again. Slowly, one by one, the boulders lifted off from me. The moment I could, I jumped out of the pile. I groaned, and stretched out my back, trying to relieve the pressure on it. Amanthe let out a gasp, and the boulders fell back. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Just surprised, is all" The entirety of the bastion groaned in strain, struggling to keep itself up. "We should get moving though. This place is coming apart at the seams"

"Why is that, anyway? I mean, it shouldn't decay this fast so early"

"Amanthe, where exactly _are_ we?"

"In the Bastion of Twilight"

"And where is that?"

"Well, you go through the portal and-"

"Exactly. Where _is_ the Bastion?" Silence. "Exactly. This entire place is sustained by magic. It's _nowhere_. It's all an illusion, given form and substance by some powerful magic further on. The Kingslayers must have destroyed it when they came through here, because now it's falling apart. In a few hours the Bastion and everything in it will cease to exist"

"Oh. So we'd better get moving" I nodded, and went onward through the corridor, turning left. The magical lighting flickered, and, coupled with the groaning of metal, the entire corridor turned right, like a boat in a storm, and froze that way. Amanthe and I both sprinted full speed out of the weakening corridor into the next room, just as the entire thing crumbled to dust, revealing a vast, infinite blackness, reminding me of the terrible moments in the vastness of reality, feeling the limitless distances. I turned around, and looked at the remains of the Throne of the Apocalypse.

The throne's red glow had completely subsided, and the entire left half had collapsed into a pile of rubble, the steps had fallen down and tilted so that they were more of a ramp then steps. Cages which had probably at some point held prisoners were collapsed on the ground, rusted. But that wasn't what _really_ stood out.

What stood out were the tentacles.

The most numerous ones were the small tentacles, about as tall as Amanthe, with spikes on their heads and closed, lidded eyes on the end of the stalks. Neither of us dared to touch them, to open those lids and see what had become of the eyes underneath. They were everywhere, almost replacing the floor when combined with the other tentacles. There were only about five of those larger ones, but each one was simply enormous, and were covered in spikes. They ground was covered in some purple liquid for the most part. Amanthe ripped off a piece of fabric from a nearby banner and dipped it in the fluid. The banner's red cloth hissed and bubbled, faint whispers, too quiet to make out, filling the air as it vanished in a cloud of smoke. Amanthe gulped. I knew what it was. The whispers gave it away.

"Old god corruption. I can handle it, but whatever you do, do NOT touch ANYTHING. Get on" Amanthe nodded, and got on my back after I lowered myself, keeping her feet as far off the ground as she could. I walked forward, hesitantly placing one foot into the warm liquid. When I did NOT begin to rot from the inside, I nodded, and took steps forward. I noticed there was some thicker, black liquid on the ground as I stepped between the tentacles. My path was cut off by the black liquid, and I wasn't going to fly here, I needed to rest my wings for the trip ahead. I stepped in the black sludge, and I was instantly swept into a vision.

_Cho'gall was swinging around a hideous, glowing purple hammer, swatting the combatants surrounding him away like mosquitoes. But blades, arrows and spells continued to pelt his demon-armor protected skin, and he slowly started to bleed. The bodies of several faceless ones were piled up in a corner, black blood pooling thickly around them. _

_As I watched the pools bubbled, and sprayed up, before some globules condensed and started after the mortals, the Kingslayers. Living faceless blood. The Kingslayers managed to avoid them and destroy the magic animating it, before continuing to wear down Cho'galls protective layers of magic, every blast of magic rippling almost harmlessly along it. A green bolt of fire, dragon-shaped, smashed into the armor, fading into nothing. That same kind of blast which had annihilated Aetheron in a single shock didn't so much as register to the ogre mage._

_Cho'gall raised his hands, thick tendrils of magic arcing out into the pools of blood and the de-animated globules of faceless blood. They rose up, spinning in channels, flowing into his mouths. Purple liquid began to fill the ground, and tentacles sprouted from Cho'galls skin._

"_Brother... it can not be..."_

I snapped out of the vision, and instantly removed my foot from the sludge, the blood that Cho'gall had missed in his spell. I flicked it off. I had known that Cho'gall was insane, but to actually _drink_ the blood of the faceless? How corrupted had he been prior to survive that much corruption that fast? I walked over to a hole in the floor, neatly punctured in a spiked circle shape, right in the middle of the room. A spiked tentacle hung down into it. I looked down. It was a long trip down, and if I saw right, there was a pool of magma at the bottom.

I slowly went down, avoiding the tentacle's spikes, and fell down. I controlled my descent, slowly lowering Amanthe and I down the tunnel, and moving out from above the lava pool before setting her down. She wiped her brow in the heat, and I looked around. The twilight caverns. After the war, this was to be my flight's home. Of course, that was built on the assumption that we would win. After seeing the number the Kingslayers pulled on this place, I had my doubts about that.

Rock was chiseled out hollows, dens, roosts, farther then I could see. A pool of magma below, still liquid but cooling as evidenced by the large number of rocks floating in it, provided warmth and light, the red glow filling the entire expanse of the caverns with a dim orange-red light. I nodded at the lava pool behind us. Cho'gall probably fell into that, which explained why there was no body. One of the roosts collapsed into the magma, splashing it out onto the path before us.

"Amanthe, stick close to me. There's probably not much time until this place begins to implode"

"Agreed" Together we walked down the path. More collapses, further out, none of them splashing molten rock to us. I looked at the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of twilight eggs around us. I got close to one, looking at the embryo in it. It wasn't moving. It was utterly still. I listened. Not even a heartbeat. It was... dead. I looked at the others. They were ALL dead. Not a scratch on their shells, either. It was like someone had just sucked the life out of them. Some of the eggs were hatched though, but the whelps were nowhere to be found. I was snapped out of wondering what happened, when suddenly our path was blocked.

By a red dragon.

I jumped back, ready to fight, but I calmed down when I noticed that the red wyrm was dead. Amanthe was the first to break the silence.

"What... happened here? What is this place?" I flew us both over the wyrm.

"The twilight caverns. It was to be our home after the war, if Deathwing won. What happened here? I don't know" I walked over, looking at the twilight eggs on the sides. The ones that weren't hatched were dead, their energy sucked right out of them. I stopped for a moment when I saw what was infront of us, then I bounded forward to the body of Sintharia.

The brood-mother was leaning out of a pool of lava, however she had managed to survive that. Her scars were open and still revealed a yellow light from inside, probably the remnants of the magic reanimating her after one of our kind killed her in an explosion. Something was in her hand, clutching it desperately even in death. Strands of blue light were flowing from it, slowly, merging into the ground and dispersing. I hesitantly opened her claws out from it. It was an orb of bright blue light, dimmed, barely anything left. The source. That was what kept the Bastion real. Now it's energy was fading, unable to be recharged.

More cave-ins. Amanthe walked up to me.

My mouth hung open. Singe was right. Sintharia was dead. I'd known Obsidia was fallen, and the Ambassador, Nalice, was probably slain too. The black flight was going to be wiped out, nothing could stop that. They were going to go extinct.

Extinct.

Extinct.

Extinct.

I was shaken from my thoughts by a scream. I snapped up, seeing a barrier of light around me, and a glob of magma flowing down from it onto the ground. I whipped my head around to the orb of blue light that sustained the Bastion. It was all but gone. We had to go. The caverns were rumbling, imploding. The path of solid rock we were on tilted towards the lava, and began sliding into it.

"Amanthe get on we need to go, now!"

"Not going to argue!" She jumped on my back, even though I was standing up. I wasted no time in taking wing, flying out of the caverns. I dodged in between rocks falling down on us, sprays of lava flying up from the crashes. I was reminded horrifyingly of when the Deeprun tram was imploding, and I had to drag Amanthe out. But this time, she was helping. When a chunk of rock was falling too fast for us to avoid, Amanthe placed a levitation spell on it, which, while it didn't stop the fall, did slow it down dramatically, enough for me to maneuver through. She wove her barrier around me again and again, giving me the same short burst of speed, but each time she did I noticed something in me drain temporarily, my personality receding.

I flapped my wings as hard as I could, ascending vertically. I didn't have enough speed to go straight up, but soon we arrived in the room that had once housed Cho'gall. I didn't waste time and immediately flew out towards the tunnel. The floor collapsed, imploding into the caverns far below, blackness being revealed. I soared through the blackness of the portion of the corridor that had collapsed, twisting around and emerging into the ascendancy sanctum. The ceiling groaned, and I looked up. I shouldn't have.

The ceiling was falling down in one piece, cracks revealing the void of nothingness beyond. I let out a terrified roar and pushed myself faster, diving through the corridor just in time to avoid us being crushed. Valiona and Theralion's room I passed quickly amidst the falling rubble. I look one last look at Valiona, and whispered a barely audible farewell to her. I paused at the rubble blocking the exit. Amanthe got off.

"Shit shit! Move move!" I squeezed my way through, with Amanthe pushing on my tail to help me along. Once I got through, she came through immediately. The magical lights flickered and went out, blinding us, though I still heard the crashing of metal and rock catching up to us. Amanthe let out a little whooshing sound, and she lit up.

Well, not really. She was holding up a barrier around her, the light forming it not having any substance, but the light was enough for me to see the way out. She scrambled back on me and I took to the air once again. Something painful whacked my tail, and I let out a cry of surprise. I heard Amanthe straining to keep the barrier up as I flew through Halfus' rookery, which, normally lit up by the pool of lava, was only barely see-able through Amanthe's light. His entire platform heaved, and like a mortal whelp's building block tower, separated into huge elementium chunks and imploded beneath us. Suddenly the light gave out, to which I responded by crashing into the turn in the corridor I hadn't seen.

"Selriona" Amanthe panted, barely able to get the words out from the effort of using so many spells. "Use... your fire"

I didn't bother responding, instead I brought a steady stream of fire into my crop, and flew on, a stream of fire lighting up the path. The ceiling was collapsing all around me. The antechamber shuddered, and the walls began to close in on us. Wait, it wasn't going to-

-SHIT IT WAS!

I pushed myself as hard as I could, straining to get into the hallway before the walls crushed us like a bird under a rock. As it was, we did, but I'm pretty sure my tail lost a spike on it's end. There it was. The portal, flickering. It was about to open, fortune was on our side! I dove through the portal just as it opened, emerging onto the Bastion gate's rock. But it wasn't over yet. The metal spires holding it up creaked. There was a terrible ghastly silence where the world seemed to hold it's breath, followed by a terrible ghastly noise, like a dragon roaring combined with the cluttering of a gnome's machine, with thunder rolling constantly.

The rock collapsed, with us on it. I let out a strangled gasp, the air rushing around me. I tried to fly off, but some sort of vacuum kept me on.

"Get off!"

"I'm trying!"

"No, off the edge!" I looked at the edge of the rock. It might help me escape the vortex. The rock was leaning along it's pillar, tilting at a horrifying angle. It wasn't falling straight towards the earth, it was falling east, in the direction where the cultists had once trained. Amanthe holding on tight, I jumped over the edge of the rock.

Immediately the suction vanished. We both sighed in relief, looking at the crumbling spire kicking up a vast dust cloud as it flattened several abandoned tents, and the rock that went tumbling down the mountainside. That was it. It was all gone. Annihilated. Nothing left. Not a thing. I was the first to speak.

"That was too close"

"Yeah, yeah, it was"

"Well, let's keep going. Don't want the Kingslayers to catch up with us"

"Alright. You do that, I'll try and find their location" After that Amanthe went silent. I turned to what my internal compass told me was north, and flew forward. After a few silent hours, I felt something that I hadn't felt in what seemed like an eternity. A little pulsing on the outside of my head, at the front of my snout. Reds. It had been so long since I felt that signal, I'd almost forgot about it. I looked ahead.

The Vermillion retreat. I'd almost forgotten about that.

I looked forward at the mesa ahead of me. If I looked closely I could see the entrance to Grim Batol, but my eyes were fixed on the tree ahead of me. A simply giant tree, the size of a demon lord easily. I had to go around that. The red flight, however much I didn't want to attack them, would tear me apart if I went through. I looked to the left. The Wetlands were there. Those held painful memories, ones I would rather not relive. I looked to the right. A few cultist camps there. I could fly over those easily. Well, ogre camp. I turned around and flew over them. Looking down, I found, to my horror, there _were_ no ogres, well, that would be a lie.

There were plenty of ogre _corpses_.

Dwarf and orc scavengers were looting the bodies, which were... rotting. I held back regurgitation and looked to my left. The tingling on that side of my head was very intense. Drakes, some red eggs, and several full grown dragons. Best to stay away from there. As I flew on, I noticed a patch of thinned webbing on my right wing, and winced in spite of myself. Lirastrasza's scar. I looked back at the Vermillion retreat. Was she there even now? I fought down the urge to fly over there for revenge. It wouldn't work. I would die before I even saw her, IF she was there. Not to mention that it wouldn't be revenge. I would have attacked Lirastrasza if she hadn't blasted me first; it was preemptive. Still, it was hard to not wish to hurt the one who hurt me.

"Logic, Selriona", I hissed at myself. "Even if you could fight her, she would still kill you. She's a fully grown dragon, centuries, maybe even millennia old" I looked around, still flying on. "And now I'm talking to myself. Brilliant" As I passed closer to the Vermillion retreat(Even though I was flying straight north next to it) the pulsations got more intense and even a little painful. I groaned.

_Stop it stop it_.

To my amazement, it responded to my thought commands. The pulsations stopped, and the resulting silence was a little bit unnerving. It was broken only by my wing beats. I looked to the right, straining my eyesight as far as I could see. Iso'rath was stationary. That made no sense, that... _thing_ was always moving. I flew over the ocean, and looked down. It would be a long, long flight across. We would have to rest to have the strength to carry us across the ocean. It would be a day's trip. We would both be thirsty and hungry by the time it was over. I set down on a cliff overlooking it, and waited for Amanthe to exit her trance. A few minutes later I heard a sharp gasp from behind me. Amanthe paused for a few seconds, probably looking around, before getting off.

"Where are we?"

"The northern edge of the highlands. It's a long flight to land on the other side, I need to rest"

"Good point. I'll get the food stores out" I nodded. We had hit an unbelievable stroke of good luck in Loch Moden. We found a mage talented enough to conjure permanent meals, which took up literally NO room in Amanthe's belongings. I walked down the cliff face to the ocean, and took several deep gulps in it. The salt didn't do anything. I'd found out from my time in Stormwind that ocean water was nearly poison to mortals. Fortunately I could drink it. Sadly, Amanthe couldn't, and the mage hadn't been able to create water the same way he had food. Still, she had stocked up on water in Thelsamar, and it -should- be enough for until we got to the Arathi highlands. I looked back up to Amanthe on the cliff, shuffling through the pack she had stolen from an alley in Stormwind, and started pulling out all kinds of food. Lettuce, bagels, chicken. I had to go into my human form to eat it, so I wouldn't need as much, and I didn't dare stop to hunt with the Kingslayers following us.

"Did you find where they are?", I asked Amanthe, letting the swell of magic complete my illusion.

"Yes, they're in the Badlands. We've left them in the dust" Amanthe's mouth pulled up into a smile as she bit into a roll. "Literally" I pulled out a chicken leg and started eating it. "So, what are your plans, after we get to the plaguelands?" I stopped chewing for a second before I resumed.

"I'm going to find Verthelion"

"He's in Hyjal, right? That's a pretty long trip"

"So is from Stormwind to the Eastern Plaguelands", I pointed out.

"Yes, but it's even longer. Not to mention it's between continents" I pondered this as I swallowed the meat, ripping off more. True, I couldn't manage a flight that long. I'd probably collapse and crash into the ocean, and drown, before I even reached the Maelstrom. I'd need some way to span the distances.

"Maybe I can ask for a portal from the Argent Crusade? They have to have a mage within their ranks"

"That _might_ work. Of course, we have to get there first"

"True, true. But for now, let's eat, then go to sleep" Amanthe nodded.

"Not going to argue with that" After we'd eaten, I groaned, stretching my arms over my head, before removing the mortal illusion. I laid down on the ground, and Amanthe walked up to me.

"Are you alright? With Valiona, I mean?" I blinked hard, closing my eyes.

"I'm fine"

"Selriona, I can tell you're lying"

"No, really, I'm fine" Oh the words burned to say.

"You're still lying. Come on, open up"

"She was my brood-mother for all intents and purposes. She's dead. How do you think I feel?"

"I know what it's like. My mom's dead too, remember?"

"How did you get past it? I mean, it, it feels so, so..." I opened my eyes.

"Hopeless?" Amanthe was looking me right in the eye, but this time it was me who broke contact.

"Exactly" Amanthe sat down next to me, rubbing my flank soothingly.

"I'll be honest. You never get past it. At least, I never did. All you can do is, move on, and diminish the pain as much as possible" I sighed, relaxing my head.

"How long does it take?" Amanthe leaned against me, sharing her warmth.

"It, varies from person to person. It took me four years" I forced out a low chuckle.

"Four years, right. I'll be lucky to live two more"

"You know, sometimes I forget your only four years old" I managed a toothy grin, looking at her.

"And I'll be fully grown in one more year"

"And after that, you'll live forever", Amanthe added in a melancholy voice. That instantly dropped the rising mood I was experiencing. How had I not thought about this earlier? I was immortal. I would live forever is nothing interfered. Amanthe would be dead in a few decades. My best friend would be dead long before I would, either that or I would die long before she did.

Now that I thought about it, anybody could die at anytime in this war.

"Amanthe, let's not worry about that, alright? Let's just, go to sleep. We've got a _long_ flight ahead of us" A small part of my brain, still brainwashed, whispered, _Ahead of YOU_. But I brushed it off. I was in Amanthe's debt. I owed it to her. I closed my eyes, and lifted up my wing so that Amanthe could lean against me. Her warmth helped so very much. Once done, I draped the other wing on her, keeping her warm, just like I had been doing the past five days. I slowly let the feeling of numbness that came with sleep overtake me, first my tail, then my body, then finally, my mind.

* * *

><p>In my dream I was fully grown. Then as I looked around at the landscape, a lush forest, it faded to a vast expanse of slate. I took one step forward, shrinking to my drake age, then another step had me fluttering over the ground as a whelp, and when I moved forward again, I was in my egg, red again. I sighed, curled up, paralyzed in a sea of darkness, but I was large, and pressing against the edges of my egg. I heard that deep motherly voice, the one I hadn't heard for real in over four years.<p>

"Now, my children. Come to the world, see what you have to guard" I bit the inside of my shell, clawed at it, bashed my skull against it. Slowly, it broke open, and I spilled out onto... grass? Where was I? I tried to turn my head around to see, but I was so weak. Around my, thirty or so other red eggs were hatching. Oh no. They were going to kill me. Even if it was a dream, it would hurt. I looked up, and nearly screeched in terror. There, looming above me, was a red dragon. She lowered her head to me, and I whimpered in my mind. She pushed me with her snout, helping me. I flapped my wings experimentally. I flew up, looking at the other red whelps around the... around the canyon.

The canyon was filled with grass and flowers and plants and trees, and in the middle of it was the red dragon. I looked at my body. I, the scales, I, I was red. We fluttered up to her.

"My children, you will stay within this grotto. I will go and bring you food to eat. Rest, learn about the world. Stay safe, I will be back" The dragon flapped her wings, going up, the air forcing me back. The air hit me! I'll show it! I brought flames rolling into my crop, and shot a blast at the sky. My blast... my blast was a simple red fireball. The wyrm smiled warmly. "Ah, my daughter, you can not blast the air. It is impossible" She turned around, flying out. I turned my attention back to the other whelps, my brothers and sisters. That was when my dream went wrong. Their colors began to flicker. They turned orange, then green, then blue, then finally, violet. They flew around me, still red, surrounding me. The red dragon, my REAL brood-mother, came back, and stared down at me, the smiles on the other whelps terrifying me. I lowered myself to the ground, whimpering in fear.

"This, my daughter, is what should have happened" She took a step forward. Suddenly, all the other whelps were red again, and it was _me_ who was twilight. My brood-mother took a step forward, and then raised a front paw. She brought it down on my form-

* * *

><p>I woke up with a strangled gasp, and looked at the moon, only just rising in the sky. I settled back to sleep.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. I'd like to thank all of you people who read my story for, well, just reading it, and thanking again all the people who reviewed:Diloph, Dusty the Umbravita, lisethshade14, xXMadCatXx, Seproth, Keelosprower15, Tich, 11SnowLeopard11, nightdragon0, Belladelias, DarkVynAngel, wanda von dunayev, KennHyrulian, Ixthy, and special thanks once again to Mlaia3 for continuing to review literally every single chapter. See you next chapter.<strong>


	18. Chapter 18:Found

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Oh, wow, derp. I forgot to say what the alternate realities in chapter 16 were last chapter. Ah well, I'll say them now.**

**Parallel Universe 1: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Last Olympian, more specifically Chapter 15, Chiron Throws a party. Property of Rick Riordan.**

**Parallel Universe 2:The Obsidian Dawn, a Warcraft fanfiction, more specifically Chapter 10, Hora's advice. See disclaimers there.**

**Parallel Universe 3:Portal 2, more specifically, Chapter 9, The Part Where He Kills You. Property of Valve.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I stared down at the broken lands of the Eastern Plaguelands. Even with the fall of the Lich King, the land would be a long time in recovering. The earth was brown, mirroring the plant life and sky perfectly. You could smell the death, or rather, the undeath in the air. I leaped off the mountains, extending my wings in a glide down to the bottom. The past week or so has been amazingly refreshing after several months where I hadn't been in my true form for longer than a few hours at a time. I looked at the pine trees, leaf-needles brown with plague and death before I neatly pulled out of my glide just before contacting the ground, soaring narrowly above the trees. I turned my body at angles as I extended my wings and kept them still for seconds at a time, having enough momentum for that to keep me- and by extension Amanthe- aloft, before having to flap them again to avoid falling victim to gravity.<p>

Ah, gravity. It's a good idea to pay attention to it.

"So Amanthe, how high do you think you can go?"

"I don't know, probably higher than you, because you need air more than I do" Oh she was just _asking _for it.

"We'll see about THAT, Amanthe!" I stopped my forward motion and began flapping my wings harder and harder, each flap pushing the ground below me away further and further. As I ascended, the miasma that seemed to hang over the plaguelands, pressing my lungs and making my muscles ache cleared away, revealing the blue purple-shell in all its splendor. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils, the chill of the north flowing through my body. Luckily Amanthe helped me to counterbalance that.

As I rose up higher, I passed through a cloud. Not those low-laying, gray clouds that covered the entire world for quite a ways, but the light white ones that on occasion grew to provide rain, but still almost never grew to be that big. The cloud passed around me, the more powerful winds in it tugging on my wings almost painfully, making electric power charge up on my scales and Amanthe's clothes, and then we broke through.

"How are you? Let me know if you're light headed, Amanthe. Don't want you passing out" Amanthe gave a light, insulted laugh.

"Please, if anything you should be worried about passing out"

"If you say so..." I kept going up, and slowly the wind rushing past me thinned, as there was less air to fly around us. I took in deep breaths, the thin air getting to me. Amanthe leaned down and patted the side of my head.

"Face it, you can't handle it"

"I'm fine" I took more deep breaths. Alright, I wasn't fine, but no way I was going to admit that. I could hear Amanthe's breathing coming more heavily. "You're breathing pretty heavily as well" I looked down at the Eastern Plaguelands, and was amazed by how it looked from four kilometers up. The thick brown haze hung like fog over the land, the few pieces of recovering green almost entirely obscured. I felt Amanthe swaying on my back.

Three.

Two.

One.

"Down, please" I obliged with slowly descending.

"So, the air finally get to you?"

"Not, not the air. The pressure, I went up too fast. I felt like my insides were trying to explode" I passed through the same cloud again, and our breathing slowly got back to normal. I hesitated over the brown miasmic cloud, and flew higher up, to two kilometers above the surface.

"Selriona? What are you doing?"

"An experiment. Do try to hold on" I dove straight down, flapping my wings for as much downward speed as possible. I extended my wings at the intense dive's bottom, and I was, for an instant, afraid the webbing would rip due to the sheer speed and we could crash. They pulled through, but the speed at which the air was rushing past me felt like I was crashing through an ocean. I started ascending, beating my wings to keep the speed. Two kilometers up, I let myself go, tucking in my wings, letting us go through an arc in the air where the force of gravity temporarily looked the other way.

My tail flopped through the air limply, jostled by the air. I managed to look at Amanthe on my back, and saw that her hair was sticking in all directions around her head, her pack slipping up over her head, and she was floating slightly above me. My entire body tingled with weightlessness, and when I relaxed my wings, they limply folded out.

At that moment, the force of gravity returned its attention to us, and demanded to know what exactly we were doing. Amanthe slammed down onto me, her hair going back down. I turned my head back forward, and peeled my wings out from my sides, which they had been slammed into, stabilizing our fall into flight.

"Alright Selriona, what did you do?"

"A little free-fall. No gravity for a few seconds, of course after that it came back with a vengeance" I settled back to flying right over the brown miasmic fog. I looked down at the ground below. Amanthe voiced my thoughts.

"Maybe we should walk the rest of the way?"

"Funny, I was just thinking the same thing" I let myself glide down into the fog, coughing a little once it entered my lungs. I set down, and the moment Amanthe got off, she shocked me.

"Ah!", we both yelled at the same time. She was the first to accuse me.

"You just shocked me!"

"What are you talking about? You jolted _me_"

"That's nonsense. You, ah let's just keep moving forward. So..."

"So..."

"Which... way... is Light's hope?"

"Well, let's keep walking," I said, beginning the shift to my human form, before stopping, changing it. "eventually we'll reach a road, and that should tell us where to go" I stopped, my illusion complete. My eyes were still violet, but this time they glowed slightly, and my ears extended far behind my head.

"S-S-Selriona?" I shrugged,

"What? Illusions are getting easier for me to do, so I figured, why not press it a little?"

"You're a blood elf?" I shrugged.

"Or high elf. Never could tell the difference between the two. But anyway, human illusions are the easiest-"

"I'm trying to figure out whether or not to be insulted by that"

"-and the next one up is, either high or blood elf. Again, I, don't know the difference" Amanthe put her hands together.

"Right, well then, let's get going" I nodded, and flexed my shoulders, the phantom exhaustion of my wings still echoing. They were getting a serious workout carrying Amanthe all the way to the Plaguelands. We stepped forward, walking through the forests of the Eastern Plaguelands. I let my scent be that of my natural form, scare away any would-be predators. The dead grass crunched under my boots pleasantly. I was breathing a little heavily, the thick aura of death around the plaguelands, giving it the name, hanging oppressively over everything, ever rock, every blade of grass, both my lungs. But that wasn't the real reason I was sad. This would be very likely the last time I saw Amanthe, once I got her to the Chapel.

Amanthe stepped around a tree, and bumped into a ghoul.

She shrieked like a banshee and jumped back at least 3 meters, aided by a hastily woven levitate spell. I walked over to the ghoul and poked it. It didn't do anything. The reanimated corpse was just standing there, looking into the distance. It just... stared off towards the horizon. I walked infront of it, waving my hand infront of it. Nothing. I kicked it in the rib cage. It stumbled back, its right arm falling off, but it went right back to staring. Amanthe gasped.

"Selriona... look..." I looked at the place she was pointing at. It was an army of undead. Abominations towered over the smaller ones with their three arms, hooks, and entrails spilling on the ground. Banshees, the bitter spirits of elves, wafted around in the breeze, floating over the earth. Wraiths, their human counterparts, were also here and there. Zombies with arrows sticking out of their backs stood drooling, as did more ghouls. Skeletal mages floated on geysers of their own power, chilling the very air with their presence.

None of them moved. None of them looked at us. They all seemed to be in the same trance as the ghoul. I opened and closed my mouth like a fish on land, and regretted doing so as the putrid smell of rotting and dead flesh penetrated my nose. Finally, after a few minutes of fighting off regurgitation, I found my voice.

"What the..." I walked over to a zombie, planting a fireball on its face, knocking it clean off. None of the others moved. The zombie collapsed backwards, the necrotic energy leaving its body. Amanthe released an explosion of holy light from around her, spreading out her hands to channel it, causing the flesh on several ghouls near her to smoke. They didn't even flinch in... any direction.

"What's going on here? Normally, the undead would be clawing our brains out right now" I launched a fireball at a banshee, the twilight flames being absorbed into its frame, making it fluctuate in size, dark blue light breaking out in some spots before it deflated, and finally the elven spirit dissipated into air. All the time it made not a noise, nor a move.

"I don't know, but I'm not complaining", I said. I knocked a ghoul over. It made no attempt to break its fall, or get up after. "Come on, lets go" I slowly made my way through the assorted undead, Amanthe right behind me. Every now and then one of us would jump when we thought we saw one of them move, but on closer examination it was just the wind moving the scraps of cloth on their forms.

"I think it might be the fall of the Lich King. Without a ruler, the Scourge are harmless. They're done, finished" Amanthe smote an Abomination in the head, the necrotic bonds unraveling and falling apart, the decayed and stitched head detaching itself from the body, which fell forward, scattering a few guts around it. Slowly, we made our way to a cobblestone road, covered in a coating of brown dust from the degenerate cloud surrounding the region. I looked to my left and to my right, coughing.

"Well, the chapel is at the easternmost edge. So that would be..." I stretched out the 'be', spinning around to the right. "that way" I pointed forward and started walking that way. Amanthe soon fell in step with me. She sighed. I sighed.

"Well, this is probably our last day together. I'm going to the Argent Crusade, you're going to, wherever" She put an arm on my shoulder. "You're a great friend, Selriona. It's been good knowing you" I smiled weakly.

"Even though I ruined your life?" She hit me lightly.

"Enough with that! I told you dozens of times, you couldn't have known"

"That doesn't change the fact that I'm sorry. Really, I'm eternally sorry"

"You don't have to be. Let. It. Go. Alright? You're my best friend, end of story" I bit my lip.

"You too. Who knows, maybe we'll see each other again?" Amanthe smiled.

"Maybe, but we have a ways to go. Let's not say our goodbyes just yet" I nodded, and we kept walking on for an hour. I decided to break the silence.

"So, how many times have you mated?" Amanthe jumped a meter into the air, limbs flailing. I looked at her curiously.

"W-w-w-w-w-w-w-WHAT?"

"It's a simple question, numeric response" Amanthe placed her forehead in her open palm.

"Rrrgh! I went over this with you the FIRST day you were in Stormwind! It's embarrassing for, uh, mortals, to talk about, about THAT!"

"Yes, but it's not for me. I don't get why you're so embarrassed"

"I, I, you, I, you, you-"

"It's a simple question, numeric response", I repeated. Amanthe sighed, and as she answered, started blushing.

"I haven't. I'm a priestess of the Cathedral of the Light, or, well, I guess I _was_" I lowered my head.

"I am so-" Amanthe put up her hand.

"Don't even start on that again. So anyways, I haven't, err. been with anyone, it's forbidden as part of training" I shook my head.

"That. Makes. No. Sense. Why would you _forbid_ mating? It just results in fewer offspring, inhibiting the next generation in terms of numbers. Not _wishing_ to mate is different, but being forbidden to?" Amanthe's blush deepened.

"Well, um, well..." Her head snapped forward, and started running. "Look, over there! People!"

I gulped. Well, this was it.

I ran after Amanthe, and soon we found ourselves in a patch of green land. There were a few mortals there, all dressed in golden armor like the paladin that had fought Aetheron so very, very long ago. There were also a few horses. Amanthe waved her hand as they ran up. One of them, a human male with more elaborate armor than the others, addressed her.

"What brings you here, woman?" Amanthe bowed.

"Commander Dawnbringer, it is an honor. We are trying to reach the Light's hope Chapel. Is it this way?" The Commander suppressed a smile.

"Quite wrong, I'm afraid. You must have taken a wrong turn at Corin's crossing, the _Argent Crusade_ is almost directly north of us, one hour by horse as the crow flies" Or, as the drake flies. Amanthe blinked in surprise in the realization that we weren't at the Chapel. One of the men glared at me. Why would he- oh. Blood/High elf, got it.

"Oh. Oh. So where are we?"

"You stand before the ruins of the Scarlet enclave. As much as it disgusts me to thank the Scourge for anything, they really helped purge those scum" He looked back at Amanthe, having fallen apparently into a self-monologue. "At any rate, you can find the Argent Crusade to the north. I wouldn't bother to much, though. They are too stubborn, too unwilling to change" Amanthe bowed, and I followed suit.

"Thank you, Commander, for the directions"

"Light watch over you"

"And you, Commander" Amanthe turned around, walking away, and I followed suit. Once we were out of their sight, I stretched my arms out, removing my illusion.

"So, due north then, right?" Amanthe nodded.

"Yes. It can't be much farther. He said that in a straight line it would be an hour by horse. I'm a _little_ bit faster than that"

"Right, so-" The sky rumbled. The earth trembled. I looked to the left, the right, up and down, trying to search for the cause. The sky darkened, becoming a shade of blood red, worse than the fog of the plaguelands itself. A huge whoosh of flapping wings filled the air, and each time it did, there was a faint _shwing shwing_, metal rubbing against each other, sounding like the swords being sharpened in the Dwarven district. I looked around frantically, and then I saw him. In the distance, just as he opened his mouth to speak, hovering over the mountainside, incomprehensibly large- no, he was tiny, insignificant- shut up.

"The sun has set on this mortal world, fools" His voice was deep and powerful, echoing slightly, as metal plates distorted the sound and gave it a slight ripple. "make peace with your end, for the Hour of Twilight falls!" He opened his mouth again, the sound of air drawing in was horrible, making me shiver. Amanthe gaped at his form off in the distance.

"That's, that's him, isn't it"

"It, it is. Deathwing" He dove down off the mountain, a stream of shadowflame(Not twilight, just shadowflame) flowing from his maw as he cleared the ground, moving kilometers in seconds. His armor plating could be heard hissing in heat as it contacted the cooler air of the plaguelands, his eyes were burned red orbs and even his horns were covered in armor, the webbing on his wings being the only things not encased in metal. His tail wasn't a spiked club, it was a barbed metal spear, like the tail of the 'devil' as some mortals believed in. If I looked closely I could see small flames peeking out from in between them, the armor on his teeth, how the plates on his wings rubbed against each other with every flap, making that horrid _shwing_ sound.

He burned the northern portion of the plaguelands, flames erupting from everything. He turned, just a few kilometers from us, and headed back, strafing along the plaguelands again and again. As he turned, some tiny birds flew up at him. No, not birds. Bolts of holy light were being hurled at him. As each one approached his being, they crashed into a spell ward, the dark runes of the shadow shell incomprehensible to me swatting each spell away like a fly swatter. I lowered onto the ground.

"Oh titans, oh no, oh no we have to get out of here!" She got on.

"Um, north, go north!" I took to the air as fast as I could, trying feebly to get out of Deathwing's path as he turned back around for another run, this time to go straight over us, supposed-friendly fire be damned. It wasn't going to work. I set down on the ground. "Selriona, what are you doing, we need to go!"

"Quiet! I'm trying to focus!" I focused hard, reaching some magic inside my body, which would not truly come out until I was fully grown, and pulled it out. I pulled the magic out of my body, from every scale, every organ in myself, picturing it flowing out of my mouth into a giant sphere. I twisted it around, forming it. Once it had, I manipulated the wards of the realm that kept people out, wards only a member of my flight could access, flying through the protective mechanisms of the portal, and finally, opening it. I looked up. Deathwing was getting closer, three kilometers away. We had maybe ten seconds. I didn't waste time telling Amanthe to get in. I simply jumped in, Amanthe on my back, into the twilight realm.

Passing through the portal, the entire world was engulfed in darkness. Slithers of shadow passed over me, twisting around like a cool fog. Then I emerged from the portal. Immediately, before I could take in my surroundings, I went through the ruins quickly, closing it so that Deathwing's flames couldn't enter through it. Once done, I fell down, exhausted from using the magic. Twilight dragons and, humiliatingly, dragonspawn, can enter the realm no problem, and fully grown dragons can even exist in both the physical and the twilight realms simultaneously.

I looked around. The brown fog of the plaguelands was gone here, replaced by a purple haze. Shadows rubbed along my scales up and down, like currents in water. The realm was very relaxing. The shadows seemed to curl inside me, removing my fatigue. I got up, feeling stronger than ever before. My mind was clear. I could see farther than ever before, not like there was much to see. All the life forms were gone, the trees vanished. Amanthe got off of me, to my surprise. I didn't even notice her weight while she was on me. I fired a small blast at a rock in front of me. The blast should have just sent it flying a few meters. Instead it shattered into pieces, the blast extending two meters in all directions. I looked at Amanthe.

She was glowing. I mean, literally, glowing. A purple aura surrounded her, glowing brightly. I looked in awe at her.

"Where, where are we?"

"We're in the twilight realm. It was really, really hard opening the portal. Luckily this place is rejuvenating to me" I remembered something crucial and looked back at Amanthe. "You aren't in any pain, are you? Any feelings of dying, that sort of thing?" She shook her head.

"No, I feel fine. Why, is that something I should be worried about?" I sighed in relief.

"No, no. It's just, there was a _tiny_ chance that my presence in the realm could make it violent, as in, slowly kill anyone not of my flight in it. Turns out I'm not strong enough for that"

"Oh _that's _comforting. So, why exactly did you do" She gestured to the entire realm. "this?"

"Well, it would keep us safe from Deathwing, and when he passed by, I would open the portal back up so we could continue on our way" Amanthe moved her hand through the air, tiny wafts of shadow being pulled along as though she were moving her hand through liquid. I stepped closer to her. "Amanthe, I want to try something. Um, I'm sorry for, well, this"

I swatted her aside with a foreleg. She flew much farther than I thought she would do, hitting the ground with a dull thud. I winced. I guess I didn't know my strength in here. I ran over to her, leaning down. "Are you okay?" She groaned and got up. I noticed her glow was slightly diminished, and she was... bleeding. She quickly wove a healing spell on the wound, and when the bleeding stopped, her glow brightened back up.

"What in the name of the Light was that for?"

"Well, I wanted to see what that glow around you was"

"What glow?" I jerked back a little.

"You mean, you don't see it?" Amanthe raised a hand infront of her face, waving it back and forth, sending little ripples across the shadows.

"Nothing, why, you see it?"

"Yes, I do. When I hit you -sorry about that, I didn't know it would be that hard- the glow went down a little. I think I can see your life-energy. I can see how close you are to dieing"

"Oh, well that's... comforting. If I start to not glow, let me know, alright?" I gave her a toothy grin.

"Oh of course. Now, we should probably leave, Deathwing has to be gone by now" I brought up the magic again and opened the portal to the outside world. Amanthe was the first through it. I stepped in after her, the world blacking out for a moment before I emerged into the physical world. I looked back at the orb of swirling indigo energy and absorbed it back into my body, before sinking to my forelegs in exhaustion. I took in deep breaths, the energy rush gone, the tiring from opening two portals in such a short time taking its toll on me. Amanthe ran over to me.

"Oh no, you are NOT passing out, I forbid you to" I moaned.

"Yes, brood-mother" I got up, and promptly collapsed on my stomach, panting. I raised my head and turned it away from Amanthe, regurgitating the contents of my stomach. Amanthe waited for me to stop, then came and rubbed the side of my head. I moaned.

"Next time I'm leaving the portal open. Opening two is just too much" I looked at the plaguelands, and my jaw fell open. The brown miasma was back and, and it was... it was all _gone_. The ground was scorched and blackened, the trees smoldering, at least half seemingly vaporized, the grass vanished. It was all destroyed. Amanthe let out a long whistle, before voicing what we were both undoubtedly thinking.

"Daaaaaaamn"

"Indeed"

"What, the hell, happened here? Why did he attack the plaguelands, of all places?"

"He's insane. Flying around, incinerating vast regions without rhyme or rhythm. Good thing, too, or he would just fly over to the capital cities and annihilate them"

"Still, damn. How can even the Kingslayers fight something _that_ powerful?"

"I don't know, but they'll find a way, I'm sure of it. The other Aspects will probably help. Well, get on. Let's get to the Chapel, or, well, what's left of it"

"Good idea" She did as I told her, and I groaned as I brought my form up on my shaking legs. I bent down, and jumped up, hovering over the ground, loosened pebbles and soot flying away with every wing beat. I slowly made my way up north. Within twenty minutes, the outlines of the Chapel came into view. Stone walls barricaded around a central building, green grass inside. How had it survived Deathwing's purging? I set down on the ground, since I didn't exactly _want_ to be shot down. Amanthe got off, understanding.

"Well, this is it", she said, looking at me.

"It is" I sat down, looking at her.

"Selriona, it was nice knowing you. I've had some pretty amazing adventures since you arrived"

"Like that time in the Hinterlands and you decided to sleep near Seradane?"

"How, how could I have known the green flight was there?" I fixed her with a mock-serious look.

"I was put to sleep for three days"

"Yeah, well, yeah. But anyway, it's almost over, the trip's almost over. I'll look around for a mage there, maybe they can teleport you to Hyjal. After that, well..."

"We'll see each other again. It's a small world, Amanthe"

"Says the one who has seen all of existence"

"Which only qualifies me to say that" She laughed, and walked up to me, hugging me around my head. I grinned, and got up. I reared up on my hind legs, and Amanthe quickly put a weak levitate on my two front legs, so that she could hold my weight up as I embraced her with my front legs, putting them over her shoulders. I slowly shifted to my human form, still hugging her.

"Thank you, for everything, especially the flight. It was, it was just amazing. Take care, you big sack of scales"

"You too, you squishy human" We let go of each other, and walked to the Chapel across the scorched earth. It was about a fifteen minute walk from this far away, and in no time we were stopped by a female paladin, wearing a silver tabard with a sun in the middle. She addressed us.

"Who are you?"

"I am Amanthe Sivering. My friend here, Selria" she paused for a second, trying to remember the name I used for my last name in Stormwind. "Verthelo helped me get here. I wish to join the Crusade" The female nodded.

"Okay, okay good enough for me. I sense no lie" Really? Not even my name? "At any rate, we will not turn away anyone who probably nearly got scorched by Deathwing. Our defenses barely stood up to his breath, and" Her eyes lowered. "we still lost several men, good men. Come in, come in" The paladin let us in, and Amanthe stopped to look around in awe. Inside the wall, the miasma of the plaguelands receded. The grass was bright and green, filling the air with the smell of Elwynn forest. Paladins milled to and fro, obviously busy. Some of them carried buckets full of water, which they poured on a few flames that had caught within the perimeter. A gnome ran up to the paladin escorting us, saluting.

"Miss Solsticebringer, the Duke has called you. He says it's something vitally important" She nodded.

"I'll go to him right away," she turned to us. "Looks like you two are coming with me, come on" She marched us over past other members of the Crusade to a man in silver armor. She bowed to him, as did Amanthe, so I figured I'd do the same.

"Ah, Katie Solsticebringer, you got my message to come right away. And, who are these two?"

"They are two survivors, who managed to avoid the black dragon's flames. One of them wants to join us" He looked at me. I pointed at Amanthe, and he turned his head that way.

"You wish to join the Crusade?"

"Yes, um, sir" The Duke nodded.

"Go into the Chapel and speak to Lord Tyrosus, he'll get you started" Amanthe bowed.

"Good luck, Amanthe"

"You too, Selria" Amanthe walked slowly off, looking back at me every couple steps. The Duke turned his attention back to Katie.

"Now, I called you here because of a certain develop-" He looked at me, and changed subject.

"Why are you here?"

"I, um, need a, uh, portal to Mount Hyjal" He nodded.

"So you are going to assist the druids in the fighting? A noble enough deed. I will send for one of our mages to transport you, until them, make yourself scarce" I stood there for a few more seconds. "As in NOW!" I turned around and walked hurriedly away from the Duke. I spent a few minutes milling about the Chapel, looking for something to do. Finally, finding nothing, I found a bed outside and collapsed in exhaustion from the portals. I slowly closed my eyes, brushing off a tear. I wished Amanthe the best of luck. She was my best friend. I meant it when I said we would meet again, the world really was too small for that not to happen.

The question was if one of us would be dead when that happened.

* * *

><p>In my dream I was exactly where I was beforehand, in the Eastern Plaguelands, but they were... they were different, somehow. There was no miasma. All the plants and trees were healthy. The Chapel didn't exist either. No roads, just nature everywhere. Nothing sentient. I looked around in awe, still in my human form. I walked forward, looking left and right. Animals scurried away. Birds sailed out of trees. I kept walking until I found something that struck fear into me, making me hide behind a tree.<p>

It was a fully grown green dragon. I peeked out my head, looking at them. Thank the titans, his back was turned. I slowly stepped out, when he whipped his head around at me. Instantly he bared his fangs, growling.

"Little twilight drake" Okay, he knows. Better go to the form that can defend itself the best. "how little you care, or how little you know, of what you do to this place" His eyes were open. Green dragons were said to almost never open their eyes save in times of great distress or when... or when they were in the dream...

Oh hells. I was in the realm of the Green dragonflight!

I slowly backed up as the green dragon took slow, deliberate steps toward me.

"Was it not enough for your master that the ones who corrupted him nearly destroyed this place as well?" I kept backing up. "Whether or not you are here of your own volition, you will not be leaving alive" He took a deep breath, and I quickly took cover behind a tree as the venomous breath sailed around me. I looked back, and saw what he meant by what I'd done.

The entire region of the dream where I had walked through was darkened, the trees twisted, corrupted. It was, however slowly, healing, and in a few minutes or hours it would be as if I never was there. I soared out of the place where I'd been, a green scaled foreleg crashing down there. That was too close.

"W-who are you?"

"I am your killer. I am Itharius, brother to Eranikus, and you are out of your element" He took another breath.

"No, please! NO!" Itharius kept breathing in, and let it out. The dream shifted. I was somewhere else. I looked around. I was on a gigantic mountain, far above the earth. Trees sprawled across it. I looked down(I was apparently flying now) and was astounded by what I saw.

The ground was covered in a purple mist. The earth was perfectly normal, the trees untouched, but there was a distinct purple mist in the dream. I set down on the mist, and swatted it with my tail club. Nothing happened to the mist, but my tail exploded in pain, almost identical to those times years ago, when the faceless hurt me in my egg. I was wondering what that could mean, when suddenly, abruptly, the dream shifted.

It was the orc, Kolkna, again. She was somewhere I couldn't tell, inside a house, gray bricks encasing me in a large cube, fifty meters on a side.

"I will find you. And then, I'm going to kill you," Her sword appeared in a poof of smoke, which swirled around me briefly, freezing me in place. She brought her sword up, and down into my head-

* * *

><p>I woke up with a strangled yell as someone slapped my face. I was up in a moment, gasping, my hands holding my head. It had felt so real...<p>

It was a gnome male, with silver hair and blue eyes, wearing a silver robe with the same tabard as that paladin, Katie Solsticebringer, had.

"My apologies, miss. I was sent to teleport you to Hyjal."

"Oh, thank you" I got up. "But, would it be okay if I found something to eat first?"

"Well, sure. Ever since the Scourge went... deader... we've had plenty of food in storage" He pointed to a table on very far end, probably impossible to see for a human. "Right over there" I nodded.

"Thank you, I'll be going" I walked over to the table, and saw that it was almost empty. Looking up at the sky, I saw that the sun had not even broken over the horizon. I sat down at the table, gently picking up an apple. I turned the shining green skin of the fruit over in my hands, before biting into it. It was crisp and sweet, juicy aswell. I hadn't had apples before, and I figured if I had tried to eat it in my true form, it would have tasted simply awful.

"Hey, Selria" My head jerked to my left, looking at the only other person sitting at the table.

"Amanthe, hi, what are you doing up so early?" She had changed slightly. Her blonde hair, normally pulled into the tail was cut short and hanging down by her neck. She wore a silver robe, with the tabard of the Argent Crusade on it. She smirked.

"I could ask you the same thing, you know" I took a deep breath, and let it out.

"I had a nightmare"

"Do tell, maybe I can help"

"It was that orc chasing me, Kolkna. She said she was going to find me and kill me"

"That's all that happened?"

"Yes" Amanthe raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"You're lying" I felt more blood rushing to my head.

"I think I was in the Emerald Dream" Amanthe looked confused.

"What's that?"

"It's the realm of the green dragonflight. It's essentially what Azeroth would have been like if intelligent life didn't form"

"Oh, so, what happened there?"

"A green dragon almost killed me"

"How did they almost kill you? It's a dream" I shook my head, taking another bite out of the apple. Amanthe took a hog shank, and tore a chunk out of it.

"It's not just a dream. It really could have killed me in there" Amanthe nodded. "So, what's the Crusade like?" Amanthe shrugged.

"I'm not really sure yet. I mean, I literally JUST joined, which brings us back to you asking me why I was up so early. I went through the joining, well, I don't know what to call it. Ritual, ceremony, what"

"What did you have to do?" Amanthe sighed, leaning a head on her palm as she took another bite, and I followed her lead with the apple. A tense silence passed for a few minutes, during which I finished the apple and ate a chicken wing. Or two.

"I can't tell you" I looked up at her delayed answer.

"What do you mean?"

"I've been sworn to secrecy" I nodded.

"Alright, I understand. At any rate, I'd better be going, you know, to Hyjal" Amanthe nodded.

"Best of luck to you" I nodded, before giving her one last hug.

"Best of luck to us all in _this_ war, my friend" I left to go to the gnome. He was waiting for me, already working up a spell. He looked up at me briefly when he saw me arriving, then went back to weaving the spell.

"This, my friend, will be a teleportation spell. It'll bring you right to the World Tree, the stronghold of the druids. From there, well, I assume you know where you'll be going" My throat tensed. The World tree? Wasn't, wasn't that where all the green dragons were? He reached a hand out to me.

"Alright, get ready" He poked me, and then instantly I flew away. The world around me compressed into a tunnel of swirling blue light and arcane energy, rushing past me like a river. Something slammed into my right side hard, and I fell down onto the ground in Hyjal. I felt more arcane energy flow along my body, and my illusion was stripped away. I stood up, and before I could react, something slammed into me full force. I fell down on my side, looking up at my attacker. An armored hand rested on my neck, keeping my head down, plated knees resting centimeters from me. A human that looked exactly like my human form was standing about thirty meters away. But that wasn't what I was really looking at.

There was a giant glowing red sword hovering right above my head, one hand holding it up. I followed the hand up to the face.

"Hello, drake", Kolkna said. "I hope you didn't think you gave me the slip"

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. And, HOLY CRAP DID THIS STORY JUST HIT 100k WORDS? This story has come such a long way from a simple word document probably not even 5k words long, it amazes me.<br>**


	19. Chapter 19:Captive

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Yay for my longest chapter to date!  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I suddenly found myself unable to breath, even though nobody was constricting my neck. It had happened. The Kingslayer had found me. Amanthe had told me that I wouldn't stand a chance against even their worst fighter. Here I was, infront of a Kingslayer, who may or may not be their worst fighter. The duplicate of my human form off to the side shimmered, becoming that gnome, Frizzle. Hells. Now I was in front of two Kingslayers. I was so, so screwed. I stammered out.<p>

"H-h-how..."

"Did I find you?" Kolkna's hand on my head pushed down with incredible force, making me give out a panicked bawl as my head was shoved into the loose ground. A small part of my mind noted that the ground smelled charred and burned, to which the other parts of my mind replied by smacking that small part and telling it to pay attention to the giant sword resting centimeters above my brain. "Well, Aruen lost your trail in the Highlands. Too much twilight energy, you know. But we did find out through our dreams you were headed somewhere to be teleported to Hyjal" Kolkna's voice was smooth and joyful, which scared me more than if she had been furious.

"How did you-" Her hand shoved my head down harder, making me gasp in pain.

"Frizzle here redirected you from wherever you were going, and then stole your illusion" So that's what that invisible wall that crashed into me during the teleport was. Kolkna stepped over to my other side, behind my horns, relinquishing her hold on my head but at the same time placing the blade of her sword to my throat. She could kill me in a movement if she wished. I was entirely at her mercy, and I got the feeling that she didn't have any. She pulled in a breath, and suddenly my head was twisted around to look at her, the sword's edge pushing my throat dangerously. Kolkna's voice suddenly took on a fury.

"Where's your cultist friend? WHERE?" She pulled my head farther, the strain on my spine making it feel like my neck was about to snap.

"She's gone" I managed to speak through my strained throat. "She left the cult, she left me", I lied. Kolkna stood up with a roar, letting my head go and taking her sword away. I snapped my head around, gasping for breath. I got up on my forelegs, the rest of my body still laying down, bringing flames into my crop, when Kolkna nodded to Frizzle.

I screamed in pain as arcs of energy appeared out of nowhere, pinning my head down to the ground, twisting my body so instead of laying on my side I was laying on my stomach. More arcs appeared over my legs, pinning them to the ground, others keeping my wings folded in to my body, and another keeping my tail down by the base of the club. I hissed in agony, trying to break out of the arcane shackles connecting me to the ground, but none of it worked. Kolkna spoke to Frizzle.

"I'm going to go get chains to bring it to Ysera. We need prisoners of war in this time, keep it immobile"

"You and I both know that's not the real reason you're doing this to it" Despite the pain, I moaned a word out.

"_Her_" Kolkna charged over to me in an instant, sword digging under my jaw before I could blink.

"Did you say something, _drake_?" I growled low in my throat.

"No" Kolkna smiled mockingly. I thought in my mind, _sadist_.

"Good, you're learning" She stood up, and spun around, kicking me in the snout with her -armored- foot, before walking away, up some hill, Frizzle leaning against a charred cinder of a tree, looking at me. I gave out a pained noise, trying to nurse my throbbing head but my legs were pinned. I allowed the arcs of burning arcane energy to push my head into the ground. I twitched in pain, thrashing around. It burned, it hurt so much. I looked at Frizzle out of the corner of my eye.

"Please... stop...", I begged. Begging? Oh how I've fallen. Her face darkened, and swirls of arcane energy started to swirl around her hands. I yelped, and kept quiet. I'll admit it, I was scared out of my mind. I was captured, I was helpless, I was in so, so much pain. I was entirely at the mercy of two mortals who are known for being some of the greatest fighters in the world. I shook in both terror and pain. After what seemed like hours, long, agonizing, never-ending hours, Kolkna returned with a metal platform on wheels, with spikes sticking up and chains on them. My eyes slitted further in terror, coming to a horrible realization. No. No, no no nonono!

Kolkna walked over to Frizzle, eyes murderous as ever.

"Help me put _it_ on the platform"

"Kolkna, are you sure about this, I mean-" Before the mage could defend herself, Kolkna had her pinned up the tree she had been leaning on, hands around her throat, the orc's eyes practically blazing, growling at her. "I didn't say anything" Kolkna let her down. The instant she did, Frizzle spread her hands out.

Yellow runes appeared on Kolkna's armor. She moved her hands slowly towards Frizzle, as if in slow motion. When she spoke, her voice was slow and deep, like the Epoch Hunter's echoes.

"Whaaat diiid youuu dooo tooo meee?"

"It's just a simple slowing enchantment, relax" Frizzble jumped out of Kolkna's slow tackle. "Look at yourself. You never used to be this angry, this temperamental. What happened to you?"

"Iiit kiiilleddd Shaaat'aaa!"

"I know, but I lost important people too. People, plural. I never sunk to this level. I never became what you are"

"Youuu aaaren'ttt meee" Kolkna took slow steps toward Frizzle.

"Maybe not, but I can tell you that I won't help you do this. You want to torture the drake? Fine, but you're not getting my help. I helped you find the drake so you could kill it quickly and get your revenge. Goodbye, hopefully the next time we meet you've cooled down" Frizzle clapped her hands, and an explosion of arcane energy radiated from her. When it faded, she was gone, and Kolkna's spell broke.

She stumbled, and glared back at me. I realized I wasn't in pain anymore. I could move. I quickly got up and prepared to fly away. I jumped up as Kolkna charged at me. I started to ascend, but Kolkna grabbed onto my paws, like a Kor'kron guard had at the Bastion, so so long ago. I hissed at her.

"Let go!" I spun around in the air, Kolkna swinging back and forth with a deathgrip on my forelegs, throwing me off balance. I tumbled through the air, Kolkna slithering along my body like a snake, finally appearing on my back, tugging on my horns to the side. I roared in pain as she did, losing my balance and roaring again when I crashed to the ground with a flash of light behind my eyes, the warrior jumping off to save herself the impact.

I instinctively tried to get up and incinerate her with the flames I still had in my crop, but Kolkna was faster and I was stunned from the fall. She tackled my head, pinning me to the ground and placing her sword at my throat again.

"Try to escape again" She pushed the sword harder to my throat, keeping my head still so I couldn't move away. "I dare you" She stood up and spun around, her plated boot hitting my head. The world exploded in a red flash of pain, and I passed out.

When I woke up I was lying on my stomach, my paws under me, wings pushed in painfully to my sides. My head was resting on the ground, no, it was resting on metal, and when I tried to lift it, when something stopped me. It was something hard, metal, going around my neck, and the moment I lifted my head about fifteen centimeters off the metal, it... constricted, pushing my head down. I let my head fall, terrified. I looked around.

A loop of chain was imbedded in the metal I was on, looping around my head, keeping me down. From the feel of things I had more chains around my body, keeping me utterly immobile. I was on the metal plate on wheels Kolkna had brought back. Oh no.

Oh no, no no no no no! I can't be chained up! No, this can't be happening!

I thrashed my body around wildly, wings and tail and legs and head trying desperately to escape, but I stopped when something painful started to tighten around me, rendering me immobile save for my head. I looked forward. I was attached to Kolkna's wolf via some sort of harness contraption, and said orc female was riding the wolf up a slope. I heard her chuckle.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you. The more you struggle, the tighter they pull. Also, don't try to breathe fire on me. On second thought, go ahead, try" I didn't like her tone, but I still brought flames into my crop, took a deep breath... hold on. I can't... I can't open my mouth! It has metal on it, keeping it shut. Oh no, nononono! I let out a whine in fear. How could this have happened? I was going to go find Verthelion, and, and now I'm at the complete mercy of an orc warrior. I'm her... as much as it hurts to think... captive. My continued existence in this world is because she wills it. I relaxed my head, all my muscles tensed, both in fear, and from the tightness of the chains keeping them immobile. Nobody else ever knew, but a silent tear escaped my eyes and dripped on the metal contraption that was my prison without walls.

Seeing as how I had nothing else to do, I found myself looking at my surroundings. Mount Hyjal was green with flowers and small gardens blossoming everywhere I looked, but the area behind me had the smell of burned wood. I was pulled up past several night elven guardians on frostsabers. Each of them saluted to Kolkna as she slowly pulled me up, and then looked at me with disgusted faces. I heard one of them whisper 'monster'. Kolkna stopped her wolf on the end of the hill, patting her wolf and speaking some words to it in some language I didn't recognize, probably orcish. She left to go talk with a tauren in leather robes looking at a shallow pool encased in stone, glowing lightly. A moonwell.

"Arch Druid"

"There is no need for formalities, Kolkna, I have heard of you and your guild's exploits within the very bastion of the cultists itself. It has helped tremendously to demotivate the enemy. You are as great a hero as any" She nodded.

"We have to track down Tyrus Blackhorn. An agent of the Legion like him can not be allowed to regroup with the legion camps down south" The Arch Druid rubbed his chin.

"Yes, true, true. But we can not fight a war on two fonts-"

"Which is exactly why I need to track him down. To prevent him from doing so. He said he wants to be alive when the Burning Legion comes to try to destroy Azeroth, which is why he helped me. But he also escaped, used me. He may very well try to get the Legion and the Cultists to ally" He nodded.

"Clear insight. Should the demons and the twilight's hammer join together, all will be lost" He looked back at me. "What are you doing with that twilight drake?"

"I am bringing _it_ up to the World Tree as a prisoner"

"Taking prisoners... why do you need that one?"

"_Personal_ reasons. Besides, _it_ can help greatly by sensing corruption" The Arch Druid's eyebrows went up.

"The twilight flight can sense corruption?" Kolkna nodded.

"Indeed, I first noticed this when a particularly persistent twilight dragon hounded Noxth, one of the warlocks within our ranks. No matter how well he hid, how many anti-detection wards he put up, the corrupted dragon always found him. I believe this one can help me find Blackhorn" Arch Druid nodded.

"Very good. But why have you stopped here?"

"I need an idea as to where to begin searching for Blackhorn. I know there are legion camps left on Hyjal, but I have no idea where. Do you have any clue as to where the satyr may have gone?"

"Well... our scouts have been reporting sightings of a legion camp down the mountain, the Gates of Sothann. It is nestled pretty far into the blaze, however" Kolkna nodded.

"Thank you, I'll get moving right away" Kolkna walked back to me, and I couldn't help but flinch in fear. As it turns out, it was well founded, because just then Kolkna took off her pack, fumbled around in it, before taking out a vial with a few drops of yellow liquid in it. She walked over to me, and took off the... the _muzzle _(Oh the humiliation)and spun around to kick me in the face again. I gasped in pain, and in that short window, she fed me the elixir. I accidentally swallowed it, and Kolkna put the wretched muzzle back on me. The smile she gave me was simply horrifying.

"That's right, drink it. Soon, you'll be too weak to fight back. I intend to use you, and then deliver you to the green. Since, since Shat'a can't fly me to the Gates, you will" She was right. Already I could feel my muscles slacking, my flames diminishing.

"Please... I'm... begging you..." Fast as a viper Kolkna flew to my side, lifted up my wing, and kicked me in the side. I gasped in pain. The orc shouldn't have been that strong, but her kick pushed all the air out of my lungs, and when she let my wing go, the tightening chains rubbed into the bones agonizingly. I whimpered in fear and pain.

"Since I can't get to your little cultist friend" She walked her fingers along my neck, up to my head, me shivering in terror. "I'll have to settle for causing you agony in _other_ ways" She gripped the skin next to my horns, and pulled. I would have roared in pain as she ripped a scale off, but the elixir had taken away the strength to even do that. Kolkna walked over to her wolf again, who had since fallen asleep, and shook it awake, before speaking it to again in orcish. She mounted it, and started pulling me up the mountainside again. This time I was completely helpless, too weak to even move.

After a few hours, the sun climbing slowly up towards its apex in the sky, she pulled into another place. There was a central lake, and a risen hill to my left. I took deep breaths, trying to steady my nerves through the consistent pain of the chains, the bumps in the road making them slowly pull off my scales and rub my flesh raw. A wolf walked down from the hill, a simply ENORMOUS white wolf male, with two yellow fangs on his lower jaw reaching almost to his eyes, not to mention all his _other_ fangs. As he walked closer I could see his eyes had a deep flame burning far inside the pupils. Kolkna got off her wolf and bowed deeply to the wolf, as did her mount.

"Lo'Gosh, it's an honor" The wolf stared at her. "I am going to take this drake and have it bring me to the Burning Legion's camp. If the Legion were to strike an alliance with the Cult..." The wolf kept silent. Maybe... maybe it was speaking into her mind? The wolf turned towards me, and then back to Kolkna. "Thank you, Lo'Gosh. I will stay here to prepare for the journey ahead" Kolkna departed for some tents on the hill, and the wolf, Lo'Gosh, turned and walked up a narrow path with white columns, turning around and looking down at the clearing.

I laid there, in continuous pain from the chains, pondering how it came to be like this. Not one day ago I was coming here to find my mate and show him the truth, that our entire flight had been brain-washed and manipulated, and now my life was in the hands of someone who absolutely hated me. I was weak, in constant pain, and chained.

Just like Lirastrasza had been.

Only this time there was no one coming to free me. The cultists were going to lose Hyjal now that the Kingslayers were here, no doubt. Was this how she felt? Helpless, at the mercy of her captors. I was just as weak as I had been when she had shot me down, but this time... I had already been found. I didn't know what exactly Kolkna's plans to 'use' me were, but I was terrified. And after that... she was going to give me over to the green flight? Fear settled like a stone in my crop. No... no it couldn't end like this. Not now! I fought denial over and over again in my mind, unwilling to accept the future full of pain and an early death.

Two human males walked over to me, each in armor and a... top hat.

"Well, lookey here. One of these bastards" I moaned in fear. Now I had to deal with these too?

"Wasn't it a twilight drake that killed your wife?" The other's face darkened into a scowl, and the hair on his arms stood on end, straight up, thickening slightly.

"Why, yes it was" He took a step closer to me, and I flinched. "Right after we escaped the Forsaken, just weeks after we joined the Alliance yet again. One of these BASTARDS" He kicked me in the throat, making me gasp in shock. "killed her! In cold blood, too. I saw the whole thing" He growled. "Well, now it's helpless. I'm going to get my anger out. Tom, please go away" The other, Tom, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Be careful George, you never know what tricks these things have up their sleeves" Tom walked away. George promptly punched me in the side, making me moan. Then he transformed. His body twisted and spun around, growing, his teeth and nails sharpened into fangs and claws, and his hair grew into course black fur. A worgen. He stabbed his claws into my shoulder blade, right where my left wing attached to my body. Out of reflex I jerked my head up in pain, hissing lightly, but the chain around my neck tightened further and pushed me down.

I was shaking all over as George delivered another blow to my back, ripping open my skin and drawing blood, the smell of my own blood making me sick. I started to gag. No! I will not regurgitate with this blasted _muzzle_ on! I won't, I won't, I won't.

Fortunately, I didn't. George turned to look me in the eye.

"Monsters like you don't deserve to live. _Your_ kind took my wife away from me. You make me _sick_. If it weren't that you're the captive of Kolkna, I'd kill you. But no, that's her pleasure. Lucky git" He leaped over to my tail, bringing his claws slowly into the flesh, deeper and deeper, until he hit bone. I shrieked in pain the entire time, and when he pulled out, I was bleeding horribly, gasping for breath. So this was my fate? To be a body for others to take out their hatred of my flight on? Was that how I would die?

Another slash down my left flank, making me bawl in pain. I would have fought back, but I didn't have the strength to so much as lift my tail, and then there were the chains. I could feel my blood starting to trickle down under me, its stench permeating the air.

"Wasn't enough I lost my children to the worgen, _no_, you BASTARDS had to kick me while I was down!" He said, before delivering a downwards kick to my wing. "Well now I'm repaying the favor!" Against my will my mind flashed back to those days when I was on the wetlands, knowing that I deserved to starve. After all this time... has nothing really changed? No, nothing has. I didn't do anything in Stormwind to make things right. I still deserve this. I _still_ deserve all the pain...

I didn't even notice when I started moving again, or that my blood was starting to make a little pool under me, or that the worgen had left. I was vaguely aware of passing through a garden filled with black circles where the earth had been charred, a raging fire elemental in one spot constantly releasing explosions of flame, but because of its immobility, it never did any real damage. I did notice when we arrived at the world tree, though.

Because that was the _biggest tree I had ever seen._

The tree spiraled up farther than I could see, which, seeing as how I was chained down like I was, wasn't really saying much. A pool of water was below it, shimmering white with arcane energies. A night elven village was nestled under the enormous roots of it. There seemed to be a battle there, piles of animated boulders shuffling around and punching night elves in armor. Earth elementals. But Kolkna didn't bring me to the village, instead, she brought me over to the edge of the mountain, looking down at the trip down. She walked over to me, and I tensed in fear.

I heard a clink, and one of my wings relaxed. Another clink, and my tail. It couldn't be. She's... letting me go? What?

She took off the last chain on my body, ignoring the muzzle.

"Don't think I'm letting you go, _drake_" My hopes instantly died. "I'm just using you for a little... recon" She took another vial, this one filled with a pale blue liquid, and put it to my maw, taking off the muzzle. I kept closed. "Alright, you want to play like that?" I still can not believe what she did next. She covered my nostrils with her hand. I opened my mouth to breathe, and of course, she put the contents of the vial in my mouth. I tried to breathe through my nostrils and keep the fluid there, but I couldn't. I ended up being forced to choke down the fluid in order to breath. I won't even begin to describe what that potion tasted like.

Kolkna placed her sword at my neck again, and stepped over to me. The potion was beginning to spread warmth through my body... strength. I flexed a claw. I could move. I was strong enough to force my weight to move! I wanted to flip over and crush Kolkna, but I didn't.

_You wouldn't stand a _chance_ against even their worst fighter_. Amanthe's words ran themselves around my head over and over.

"Get up" I stayed down, until I felt the sword point dig deeper under my chin. Still a little dizzy from my blood loss, I stood up. Kolkna was... on my back. Just like Amanthe had been. What was she-

_I'm just using you for a little... recon_.

Oh hells.

"Now, down the mountain. Head towards the demonic corruption" I stayed still, until she drove the tip of her sword down my right flank, making me roar in pain. She leaned down next to my right ear-plate. "_Now_" I lowered my head, and jumped off the mountainside, Kolkna holding on to me so tight that I knew I wouldn't have a hope of throwing her off. I slowly flew down, utilizing the thermals radiating from Ragnaros' intrusion to stay aloft, slowly gliding down with minimal flapping required. My body ached all over, I was bleeding, and I had lost some scales from where the chains were. Kolkna grabbed my horns and pulled hard to the right. I screamed in panic and turned right, understanding her intentions.

"Please. Please, I'm sorry-" I felt an armored boot to the side of my face, barely missing my eye.

"I don't want your empty _apologies_, drake" I lowered my head, and continued to slowly descend. The glow of Sulfuron Keep was so bright it nearly blinded me even from a kilometer away. Kolkna tugged on my horns, pulling back. I stopped. This wasn't like how I brought Amanthe to the plaguelands. It was my own choice. We were friends. Kolkna... I was nothing more than a flight slave to her. Little more than the common gryphon tamed by Stormwind. And I hated it. I also had a feeling Kolkna knew this.

"Down" I flapped my wings slowly, letting gravity pull me down, making it a not-deadly fall. I landed. I hadn't noticed any demonic corruption. It was likely I needed to be in the twilight realm to do that.

The Gates of Sothann were crawling with demons of a kind, gray skinned with leathery wings on their backs, with a mouth that went almost all the way around their heads, filled with spiked teeth. The really creepy part, however, was their chest.

Their chests had a mouth on it, well, more like someone had cut them in half horizontally, put spiked teeth on both ends, and magically attached them, so the upper torso was floating on the bottom one. Kolkna painfully steered me to a corner, and made me set down. Oh, being steered. The embarrassment. She got off, holding me at sword-point, as she took another vial out of her pack. At this rate the number of potions she gave me would kill me... maybe that was her goal. This vial's fluid was a light green, and she fed it to me the same way she did the other elixir.

I instantly fell to my side, unable to move. Kolkna stood up, nodding, before heading off to the demons. She said one last thing to me.

"Sweet dreams" The world was going dark. A shadow passed over me, and I was encased in darkness.

* * *

><p>I lifted my head up, looking around. Hold on- I could move? I looked around, but I couldn't see anything. I looked down at myself. Myself, I could see, but there was no light. What the hells was going on here?<p>

Kolkna appeared right infront of me. I screamed and leaped back. When she spoke, there was something wrong with her voice. I didn't know what it was, but there was... there was something wrong with her voice.

"Hello drake" She held out her hand, her sword materializing out of nowhere. "I've been waiting a long time for this" She started walking forward, swinging her sword in wide arcs as I walked backwards. The blackness below me was a floor! "Die" She ran at me, spinning her sword in giant arcs. I gave out a panicked roar, before I took wing above her. She jumped up at me and once again grabbed onto my feet. I was terrified, my heart was beating faster than I thought healthy. I spun around, flapping my wings to stay up, but there wasn't anything for me to judge against. I got more and more panicked, and the more afraid I was, the stronger Kolkna's swings were, the more she unbalanced me, the more _terrible_ her face was, like a nightmare.

I fell down, nearly crushing her. Fast as thought, Kolkna was on her feet, sword raised at me. I screamed in fear and jumped back, her sword imbedding itself into the pitch blackness where I had been just a moment before. I was getting more and more afraid, making me lose hope, and she was getting stronger and faster. I kept dodging her wild, fury-filled strikes, but I was losing strength Kolkna grinned at me.

"Weakling. You are a failure, Selriona" That's what got me. How did she know my name? I reared up on my hind legs, my claws parrying her next sword strike, a strike that should have simply cut through me. Kolkna gasped, and fell back. Kolkna didn't know my name. This couldn't be real. Something... something the real Kolkna fed to me. My mind was hazy. I looked at the Fake-Kolkna, scowling, standing up.

"Pathetic little drake! Know to respect those stronger than you!" I laughed.

"Kolkna _is_ stronger than me, but she doesn't know my name" Fake-Kolkna's eyes widened in shock when I pounced on her. She was suddenly slow and weak, and I wasn't afraid of her. I took a deep breath, bringing fire into my crop, and incinerated her.

Fake-Kolkna didn't scream. She didn't burn. She simply vanished into a puff of shadow, wafting away. I did it. It was just a nightmare. The more I was afraid of Fake-Kolkna, the stronger she was. Nightmares didn't have any strength against you if you didn't fear them. I looked around at the vast darkness. Um... now what? Something clicked behind me. I turned around, and saw a metal door, with some sort of wheel on it. The wheel spun around, opening the door. I readied myself for whatever the nightmare was going to throw me this time.

Nothing came out. White light shone out from the door, which was simply a door frame suspended in the air. It was like a portal. I walked over to it and peered through. Nothing on the other side, just white. I tried to go through, but I was too big for the door. Fine then. I contracted to my human form, and walked into the whiteness.

Instantly I started falling, the sensation of rushing air past me. I tried to enter my true form, but nothing happened. My mind was getting blurry. I forgot where I was. I forgot it wasn't real. I forgot... forgot what?

I was standing in Stormwind. It was a dreary day, storm clouds covering the sky. The wind blew through the streets, kicking up waves on the Canals. I was standing infront of a few priests, Amanthe by my side. Guards were all around us. Something seemed strangely familiar. Suddenly, I was engulfed in purple light, covering me head to toe, and Amanthe had a few blotches of violet on her skin. Samuel was standing off to the side, and he too had some. All the guards pulled their swords. A disembodied voice echoed throughout Stormwind.

"All three of them are cultists! Kill the lot of them!" They charged at me like a tidal wave, rushing in to claim its victim and pull them out to sea to die. I grabbed Amanthe by the waist and jumped her over the guards. Samuel was cowering before a guard. That made no sense, Samuel was a mage, he could defend himself somewhat.

"Selriona, help!" I ran over to him and palmed the guard in the face, making him fall back, unconscious. That made no sense either. I wasn't that strong in my human form, and he was wearing a helmet. I grabbed Samuel by the wrist and pulled him over to Amanthe, who was crouched down, looking up hopelessly as a sword descended on her. I jump-kicked the guard wielding the sword to the side, helping her up.

"Come on we have to go"

"Thank you" Her voice... her voice had something wrong with it. I led the two of them through the Cathedral square and into the Canals, but when we entered the Mage Quarter things went wrong. Purple walls rose up on all sides of us, forcing us into a narrow tunnel. Up above, the clouds were darkening again. Guards exploded from the walls, eliciting a scream of terror from both Samuel and Amanthe, both of them cowering behind me as I knocked them out. We kept running. I was getting more and more afraid by the second. Hadn't we already passed that lamp post? The path in front of me curved up like a wheel, but the force of gravity stayed true. I was in a wheel. No matter how far we ran, we were trapped, and each guard that _literally_ exploded from the walls was getting harder and harder to knock out, and the ones I had knocked out before were waking up. Each exploded section of the Mage Quarter sealed back up.

I tried to enter my true form to fly out, but nothing happened. I was stuck in my illusion! A swarm of guards appeared on all our sides, trapping us.

"Samuel, freeze them" His voice shook in fear.

"I-I can't! I can't!"

"Amanthe, scream!" She was shaking in terror. I took a deep breath as the guards infront of me charged, sending a wall of twilight flames at them, making them fall back, before throwing it back at the guards behind us. I kept sending fire back and forth, but it was hopeless. The guards were learning to use their shields to deflect them, and they were getting faster. Samuel and Amanthe weren't doing anything. I was their only hope, and I was failing.

A drop of rain from the now-active storm clouds went... up... past me. I looked up, and gasped. I was in a giant wheel, suspended above Stormwind. That wasn't possible. Unless... unless... yes, it was a dream! I felt all my panic disperse from me as a sword pierced Samuel and Amanthe's hearts. Everything around me froze. I screamed in fury, and incinerated all the guards, all their weapons, and burned the wounds of my friends closed. I fell down to the ground exhausted, Amanthe and Samuel coming over to me.

"Selriona? Are you okay?", Amanthe asked. There was still something wrong with her voice. But what? I threw her hand off of me.

"Shut up! None of you are real, this is all just a nightmare!" Both their faces widened in an expression of shock, before grinning evilly. Samuel responded in a chilling voice, the voice of Cho'gall, well, Cho to be precise.

"Good job, drake" The entire scene faded into a world of darkness, like the kind Fake-Kolkna had confronted me in. I was in my true form. When had that happened? No... no wait! I'd heard of this kind of thing before. A potion that puts you in a state of nightmares, where you face your darkest fears. I groaned. Why couldn't it have been a potion that puts you in a state of happy dreams where everything is all right? Oh yes. Kolkna hates my guts. Alright, so. Darkest fear number one: Kolkna. That was obvious. Wow, was I really _that _afraid of her that she qualified as one of my darkest fears? Number two, um, not being able to escape Stormwind? Hmm, no. That wasn't it. I recalled how helpless Amanthe and Samuel had been, how the guards seemed to go for them first.

Darkest fear number two was failing to protect my friends.

Alright, that's two terrors defeated. So what was next?

The ground suddenly gave way under me. I let out a panicked bawl before catching myself in the air. I looked around, before seeing him. Verthelion was in front of me, flying away. Even though I knew it was a potion-induced nightmare, I flew after him.

"Hey, wait up!" Alright, so even if I knew it wasn't real, I would still feel the emotions as if it were. Verthelion didn't seem to hear me, because he kept flying. I growled, suddenly irritated, and flew faster, catching up to him. He still didn't seem to see me. I looked around. There were other twilight drakes flying with him. They were all flying towards something, but what?

A green light exploded in the distance, and an enormous green wyrm appeared out of nowhere, almost as big as Deathwing, with elegant horns, open eyes that shimmered with rainbow colors. Looking into them, it was like I was looking into the eyes of every being on Azeroth all at once.

Ysera.

The other drakes broke off into fighting formations, surrounding the green aspect. I lost sight of Verthelion. Right away I knew what was going on.

Darkest fear number three: Failing to save Verthelion. Little bolts of twilight energy were shot at Ysera constantly, but a circular green fog engulfed each one as it neared Ysera, functioning as a shield. Not one of them touched her. She took a deep breath, and sprayed green mist over a half-dozen of my kin. I knew it was a dream, but watching them fall still brought out a sense of helplessness. In response to this, Ysera's colors seemed brighter, and our numbers suddenly seemed smaller, even if six didn't just fall to her poisonous breath. I fired my own blast at her, but it was simply blocked by the same green fog.

Fine then.

I flew over Ysera and landed on her back, taking a deep breath to ignite her scales there, when suddenly she lurched up, and then down in the air, throwing me off balance and sending me tumbling down. She caught me in a claw, tightening around me. Fear grabbed at my heart, making me cross that fine line between accepting a dream as reality and knowing what it is.

I roared for help, but none came. I twisted around as Ysera's claws slowly, _slowly_, tightened around me. By some miracle, I managed to escape, but her tail-club smacked me in the side, sending me sailing out of balance. I crashed into... a mountain? I looked at what I was resting on. It was invisible, but it was a small mountain. Verthelion. I needed to find Verthelion. I looked around frantically, trying to spot him. Another poisonous breath, and twelve more deaths. My heart plummeted. Reinforcements were coming, but Ysera was an _Aspect_.

I took wing, dodging between floating green mist that made any drake that flew into it pass out, poison breaths, and staying _far_ away from Ysera. I looked left and right for Verthelion, not finding him. I had to get him out of this fight, I had to! But I couldn't find him. What if he was already dead? I could be looking for a corpse! My helplessness seemed to impact reality, as Ysera seemed to grow even more powerful, and my kin became more and more desperate. There! Up above her, flying in random circles, pelting twilight fireballs down at her. Verthelion.

I flew towards him as fast as I could, but Ysera also saw him. She took a deep breath. _NO!_ I forced myself to fly faster, using other drakes for leverage to speed up, anything to get to Verthelion before Ysera's poison breath. The first tinges of green came out of her maw, going straight up. I was almost to him! I could do it!

"Verthelion!" This time he noticed me, and turned to look at me. He stammered.

"S-S-SELRIONA?" I crashed into him, knocking him out of the way of the poison breath, which passed harmlessly past my tail-club. We careened out of balance, but I managed to get enough control to steer our fall towards the same mountain Ysera had smacked me to. We landed in a tangled mess of claws, wings and scales, but slowly I managed to pry myself off, looking at him, smiling. I frowned. Something was wrong. The way he looked at me, his eyes burning red.

"After all this time, almost a YEAR, you decide to show up NOW?" I backed up.

"I didn't know where you were until recently! When I did, I, I came as quick as I could!" He pounced at me, pinning me to the ground. My heart pounded incredibly loudly. Verthelion had me pinned, and I couldn't move. When had he gotten this strong?

"YOU LIE! You brought your little mortal friend to the plaguelands first! She was more important to you than I was!" That made me freeze. How did he know? I heard the gurgling sound that indicated an imminent flame breath. He dug his claws into my chest, making me bleed. I tensed my muscles, trying desperately to get him off of me. It didn't work. I was panicking. Then I knew what I had to do. I saw dark blue light deep inside Verthelion's throat. I did the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life.

"I'm sorry" I brought a small fire into my crop, and launched a fireball into his open maw. His pupils went even more slitted as he burned inside, before rising up off of me like a cloud. He was growing, expanding. No, this was wrong. Something didn't add up. Verthelion burst into a puff of smoke, and everything went white again. I came back to realizing it was a dream, briefly, just in time to find out what this specific nightmare actually was.

My third darkest fear was that Verthelion would hate me when I found him.

It was dark. I was surrounded by some sort of fluid, and I was taking up most of the room in my... egg? No, this must be a dr- what was I thinking about just now? Oh yes. I need to hatch. I once again pecked and bit and clawed my way out, spilling out onto grass. The moment I touched the grass, I was in my true form, a twilight drake. I looked around. I was in a sort of 'bowl' in the earth, thirty meters in diameter and ten meters high. Flowers of all sorts of colors bloomed around me. The air smelled like perfume that I had smelled in Stormwind, heavenly. I looked closer. There were about thirty red eggs scattered around the bowl, my own twilight egg included. In the center was... oh no.

My brood-mother. She was looking at me, and took a step towards me. Her voice was strange, something familiar about it, but it was still... wrong. She growled.

"Little twilight drake. How arrogant you are! You won't take my children! Never" I jumped back as she blasted the spot where I had just been with a fireball.

"M-mother, it's me!" She paused for a second, and continued in her wrong-voice.

"A bold lie! Is it not enough I lost my last brood, now you must torment me with lies?" I quickly soared into the air, dodging a stream of flame that had been directed at me. The place where it had hit bloomed with flowers and tiny saplings. I grabbed on to the edge of the 'bowl', looking down at my brood-mother. It was happening, just like I had feared when I was a whelp.

My own brood-mother was going to kill me.

I dodged another flame breath, crashing down next to an egg. My sibling, at least, my half-sibling at the very least. I screeched in fear, and flew out of the way of another flame breath, the fire washing harmlessly over the shell. My brood-mother simply reached out with her front leg and smacked me out of the air, since I had foolishly flown close enough to her. I crashed into the stone with a crack. I roared in pain. My wing... my right wing was broken. I looked up as the red dragon walked closer to me. Ignoring the blinding pain, I got out of the way as she reared up and brought her full weight down on the spot where I'd just been, but she still flared out her wings, the smaller talons on them scratching me across the head, before she drew her wings in, pulling me along like a fish caught in a net.

She turned around and placed one paw over my body, keeping the brunt of her weight off, but still immobilizing me. There wasn't any way I could beat her in a fight. I had to convince her that she really was my brood-mother.

"Please, it, it really is me!" She stopped moving, a smile playing on her jaws.

"I'll... entertain this. Explain"

"Y-your last brood, how many were taken?" She growled.

"You dare open such wounds? Hmmph. Very well, twenty-four" She pushed her paw down on me harder, breaking a few ribs, making me roar in pain as the world briefly flickered. Twenty-four. The same number of eggs that had been around when I hatched, even if only eight of us survived.

"I was, I was one of those twenty-four!" She bent her head down to me, her warm breath wafting over my head.

"Prove it, then. And maybe, just maybe, I'll let you live"

"The first words you said to me, the first words I heard, when I tried to hatch prematurely, you said 'Not yet, not yet. A few more weeks, just wait'!" This made my brood-mother pull back her head. She contemplated this for a few moments, before taking her paw off of me. I gasped in pain, moving slowly, as to not overtax my broken ribs.

"It, it really is you, isn't it?" I looked up at her. "But why did you come here? How did you, how did you find me?"

"I-" I froze. How had I found her? Before this I was... oh. "I didn't find you. This is all a dream" My brood-mother smiled.

"Good job" For that moment, her voice was her own voice again. Everything became black again.

The fourth of my darkest fears was plain and obvious, that my brood-mother would try to kill me when, and if, I found her.

I could feel the world coming back into focus. The nightmare elixir must have been wearing off. But it seems it wasn't done yet. It wanted me to face one last nightmare. And this one was the most horrifying of them all.

I was in the place Valiona had taken care of me and my clutch-mates while I was a whelp. I was still in my true form, but all my injuries from the last vision had worn off, all the pain a memory. I looked around. There were a few carcasses of stag, fresh from the looks of it. I stepped over to one. It was a dream, but those stags still smelled _so_ good. I was about to lower my snout into one and devour it when the world became very hot and very bright. I was thrown away from the stag, which was now on fire. I looked at who had thrown the fireball. It was a female red drake, on top of the 'bowl', sitting, smiling.

"Hello there, _Selriona_"

"Who, who are you?"

"My name, is Nalestrasza" Nalestrasza's voice sounded so familiar. I couldn't quite place my claw on it though. She spread her wings and dove down, landing on the opposite end of the circular area. She flicked her tail-club back and forth, walking over to a cave, and incinerating the twigs in it. Each step she took, tiny blades of grass stuck up.

"I know you're not real. You're just a figment of my imagination, created by that thing Kolkna made me drink" Nalestrasza laughed. So hauntingly familiar...

"Oh, I am much more real than you think. Exactly how much do you know of the Potion of Nightmares?"

"Nothing, except that it makes me face my darkest fears. What I can't imagine is why you're here"

"Oh, you know much more than you think. You heard it talked about, but didn't consciously hear it. Your subconscious did, however. If you fail to defeat one of your darkest fears, you'll be placed in a permanent coma"

"P-p-permanent?" Nalestrasza shrugged, her wings moving up and down.

"Well, permanent to mortals. To you, it might just be for another two-hundred years"

"That still doesn't explain why you're here"

"You don't need to understand. I am your deepest, darkest fear. And I am going to win this fight" Nalestrasza pounced at me, and I only just managed to turn around, hitting her in the chest with my club. Her forward momentum diminished, but didn't fade. She landed, claws grabbing at my tail. I yanked it up, hitting her in the head. That should have knocked her out... oh. She was just a nightmare, and furthermore, she was a nightmare that knew it was a nightmare.

She took a deep breath, that gurgling noise alerting me to what she was about to do. I managed to leap out of the way from her fireball, but my left wing still got singed. I took to the air. I was dominant in the air. I could beat her that way. I looked down at Nalestrasza, firing blast after bolt after fireball of twilight energy, but she too took to the air, dodging each one with amazing grace. Like I would have.

She slammed into me, claws gripping my sides, just away from my stomach. We started to descend, but the dream, no, the _nightmare_ kept us up. Nalestrasza grinned, and spoke again. That voice, so familiar, it seemed to fit on her. It worked with her.

"I am a nightmare that knows it is one, just like you thought. I know I can not die. I know I do not need to breathe, or have blood. What about you?" I smiled despite her claws digging through my scales, secretly bringing up flames into my crop.

"What about me? This is _my _mind" I twisted around, willing me to have enough strength to hurl Nalestrasza off and towards the purple ground of the twilight rise far below. I dove at her, spitting a twilight fireball at her. True to my aim, the shadowy fire caught her in the chest, igniting, burning there eternally. I willed my injuries to heal, and the pain to fade, before finishing the dive by burying my nose horn in her already flaming chest. The momentum should have shattered her, but she simply got up, my flames extinguishing, the wound healing. She growled at me, pacing around like a cat around a mouse.

"You'll PAY for that" She pounced me, but I was ready. I willed her to freeze in place.

"You're not going to die, after all, you weren't ever alive" Then I willed Nalestrasza's body to die, before stripping her of her existence in my mind. The dream shuddered, and I looked up at the sky. It was a swirling vortex of white. I felt a wind tugging me up. This was it. I was waking up. I looked down at Nalestrasza's body, when something in my mind started clicking. She had a scar on her back. A faint white scar, on her right side, the same exact spot mine was.

Nalestrasza had told me she was more real than I thought. I realized what was wrong with everyone's voice, Kolkna, Amanthe, my brood-mother, and Nalestrasza; they all had _my_ voice.

And as I rose up, flying into the waking world to deal with the real Kolkna again, my mind finished the puzzle, as I looked down at Nalestrasza's body. My voice had sounded so natural coming from her because it was also _her_ voice. Nalestrasza was who I would have been had I not become twilight, and this realization shot a bolt of raw, numbing terror through me, condensed nightmarish horror as I woke up screaming.

My deepest, darkest fear, so far down not even I knew it...

Was myself.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**The nightmare portion was actually inspired by , well, a nightmare I had last week. Scary stuff, nightmares, because no matter how far you run or how well you hide from what's scaring you, it will always, always find you.**


	20. Chapter 20:Freed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

****Also, I'm thinking of getting a beta, if anyone wants to let me know, because some mistakes always get by me when I check it over.****

* * *

><p>I woke up thrashing, but a hand immediately held my head down until my panic subsided, and afterward as well. I panted, trying to force the memories of the nightmare potion out of my head. Nalestrasza... <em>she<em> was my deepest fear? She was who I would have been had I stayed in the red flight. But that wasn't what truly scared me about her. She was a nightmare, just like all the others, but what made her so terrible was that she was self-aware. She was a nightmare that knew it was one, a dream given thought, evil given form. Would I have behaved like that if I stayed red? No way to tell. It was only my dominance in the nightmare that had allowed me to destroy Nalestrasza, killing a dream.

For a moment I worried she was still in my mind somehow, searching for anything to destroy me, but I realized that she was a part of my mind, and as such, I controlled her to a certain degree. I sighed, before returning my attention to the real world.

I was still in the Gates of Sothann, with someone on my back, armored hands pinning my head to the ground- oh no.

Kolkna. She was smiling at me from the base of my neck, a sickening, false-sweet smile as she pulled my head back, putting tension on my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the body of a night elf with a giant hole in its chest, black blood seeping onto the broken ground. However, this night elf had black horns on his head, and was covered in fur not unlike a the stories I'd heard of felhounds.

A satyr.

"Up, drake" I sighed, and took wing. Like before, Kolkna was grabbing onto me too tight for me to have any hope of dropping her. The sun had gone down, the glow of Ragnaros' fortress blazing like a camp fire during midnight. If I weren't a captive to a Kingslayer, I would have perched on the mountain to look down at it. Despite being the intrusion of an elemental lord hells-bent on turning Azeroth to cinders and killing all life, it was quite a sight. Unfortunately, I was Kolkna's captive, and I was completely subject to her will. I flew her up to the mountain, where she stepped off of me, holding her sword to my throat the whole time. I vaguely noticed that my wounds from earlier had healed. Huh. Apparently that potion has healing properties.

Kolkna, still holding her sword in position to kill me if I so much as flinched, took out another vial. A strength sapper. No, not again. That feeling of helplessness, it was horrible.

"Please, please we can talk this over-" She shoved it down my throat. I gagged, but it still went down. I held it in my crop, willing it to not go down. But, sadly, it seemed to be a relaxant as well. The 'door' between my stomach and crop opened of its own accord, and the mixture flowed in.

I passed out, having ingested more than I had the first time.

I swirled through darkness. I didn't have a body. I was just a consciousness. Kolkna's a real sadist, isn't she? Honestly, she would be right at home with the cultists! It felt like seconds, but then the darkness fell away, and I was back in my body. I moaned in despair. I was chained back up, the wretched muzzle on my jaws again, and Kolkna seemed to have taken the liberty of tightening the chains before hand. I tried to lift my tail, but nothing happened. I was weak again. I raised my eyes, looking at Kolkna's wolf dragging me forward. I focused my eyes on the scene around me.

Tree.

Tree.

Magical pool created by a blind, half-night elf mongrel.

More tree.

I was under Nordrassil, heading towards the night elven village I'd seen earlier. My muscles tensed, and my breathing sped up. This was it. I was well and truly dead now. Kolkna led her wolf, and by extension, myself, through the skirmishes with earth elementals. If I looked closely enough, I could see the cracks on the individual boulders making up their torso, arms and head, red heat glowing from inside, the two gems they had for eyes instead molten holes in the tiny pebble head. One punched the ground, sending a series of spiked rocks rushing towards a male night elf in armor, with a sword and shield. He crouched down, lowering his shield, the spikes crashing into it with a small explosion, sending the ground nearby in all directions. The warrior was knocked back a good two meters by the burst of force, but otherwise un-harmed.

As it was, a shard of earth flew out and struck me in my right wing, tearing a small hole through the webbing and glancing off my scales, leaving another portion of exposed flesh. I whimpered. Kolkna got off her wolf next to a larger building, and spoke to it in orcish again, probably to stay. She walked over to a tauren male in light armor, and started speaking in a rushed, quiet tone, occasionally gesturing back to me. The tauren made a suggestion, and Kolkna threw her hands up in aggravation. She started to argue, but the tauren cut her off. I only caught three words: prisoner, information, allowed. Kolkna nodded, and walked back over to me, a scowl on her face.

"Well, you pitiful _excuse_ of a drake, looks like you're in luck. Tholo Whitehoof has decided you are to be placed in the _care_ of the green flight, not my own" She un-hooked my mobile CAGE from her wolf. "Come along. We have a war to assist in" She turned away, and just started to walk away when I wheezed one word to her through my exhaustion.

"Wait" She stopped and looked over her shoulder, displeasure clear and evident. "I'm... truly... sorry" She huffed, turned around and continued to walk away.

"The only reason you say that is because I have captured you" She turned around a corner, vanishing behind a building. I waited there for several more minutes, before the night, and Kolkna's strength-sapping mixture, finally took its toll on me. I closed my eyes, the nightmare potion clearly not having been a restful sleep. I slipped into unconsciousness, and a blissful, dreamless sleep.

Sleep was all too short.

I woke back up, groaning, and prepared to stretch, when the horrible stiffness in my wings and legs reminded me of my situation. I glanced my eyes around, looking for anything that might be important, anyone coming towards me, something happening with Hyjal, a way to escape. It seemed that the earth-lava elementals had been subdued, as they weren't rising up from the earth anymore. I groaned. My throat was parched. How long had it been since I drank? A day probably. I _needed_ to drink. And eat, I was also starving, but nowhere near as bad as my thirst. I looked around. I was maybe a kilometer from the night elven village, and Nordrassil still loomed up higher than I could see. I moaned, tensing my muscles against the chains. The weakness elixir had worn off, but I was still hopelessly trapped. I needed a miracle to escape.

A night elf male walked over to me. He had the standard violet skin, and green hair that went down his neck. He wore bright green, leather robes, patterned as if you were looking into a forest, and the closer I looked, the more details I could see. Tears, frayed places, smaller designs like branches, but when I looked away, the details were gone. The elf's eyes themselves were closed, yet he walked towards me as easily as if they were opened. The closed eyes gave it away. A green dragon. I let another moan escape.

"Hello there, little drake" I looked up at him, meeting his lidded eyes. If he was trying to glare at me with closed eyes... it was working.

"What do you want with me?"

"Our forces are pushing towards Ragnaros' domain. The ancients have joined us, and already one of the greatest heroes of the millennium is spying on the twilight's hammer. We have no doubt that your corrupted kind will try to stop us"

"And what does that have to do with me?"

"What are your kind's numbers in Hyjal? Where are your roosts, how many drakes, dragons, cultists even, everything you know"

"And why should I tell you?"

"So that you don't die of hunger and thirst" I sighed, trying to look at the ground, but my eyes kept finding themselves drawn to the green's closed ones.

"I don't know anything. I was in the patrols around the Bastion of Twilight. I only arrived yesterday, and that was when that _sadistic_ Kingslayer captured me" The green smiled.

"And why were you arriving? Who were you to report to? Simply tell me, and you will be given water and food" I growled, but quickly shut up as the dragon- the _wyrm_, over five centuries old, began to have green mist seeping out of his hands. I thought, well, supposed, that honesty would get me out of this situation the fastest. If they saw I was no threat, they would let me go, and then I could find Verthelion.

Or they wouldn't believe me, and I would die of thirst.

"I arrived of my own volition. I was shot down in the highlands, and afterward I tracked... someone... to Hyjal, and I got captured" The green nodded.

"Alright. Now, tell me the truth" I sighed, and grumbled.

"I figured you wouldn't believe me"

"What was that?"

"I said I knew you wouldn't believe me. Why would you, anyways. In fact, why capture me at all? I could tell you completely inaccurate information, and you would never know" A smile appeared on the wyrm's mouth.

"That's true, you could tell us false information. We would give you the requirements to survive, and we would never be the wiser. At least, until we drive back the attack. Then we will know you lied to us, and execute you, freeing you from the corruption that taints your body and mind" My throat clenched at that, the dryness making me cough. "I'll be back in an hour. I suggest you give as at least a satisfactory answer so that you do not die of thirst. Horrible way to go, that" The elf stood up, and walked away, back towards the buildings nestled under Nordrassil. A few meters from me, green fog enveloped his being. When it faded, a gigantic green wyrm stood in his place, eyes closed, horns maybe fifteen degrees off from pointing straight back, a small crop of hair hanging down from his maw, and the standard flap of loosened skin on his neck. He flapped his wings, and soared away. I whined in thirst. Alright then. Time to start coming up with stuff.

I needed it to be realistic, I obviously couldn't say they had just one drake. Now then, I had said I didn't know anything because I was just arriving. Who was I to report to...

_Honestly, why did Cho'gall choose me, not Desperiona? She has experience with being a brood-mother ._

Alright. I would say I was reporting to Desperiona. I didn't know if she was actually in Hyjal, but it was worth a shot. Okay, that's out of the way. Now, I just had to look around for a way to escape. I looked around myself as well as I could, immobilized as I was. A stone path went up past my left, going upwards in the 'bowl' that housed the world tree. The trees around me had some sort of berry on them, and I spotted a somewhat unintelligent faerie dragon further away eating them. But none of them were anywhere close to me, and that probably wasn't an accident.

I eyed the metal I was on. Adamantium. It was a metal designed to absorb thermal energy and convert it into its own durability, to a certain extent. It was for this reason adamantium was used to contain Deathwing's powers, it was the only metal available at the time that could. Of course, now elementium was ready in vast quantities, and it was instead this metal that held the black aspect in one piece. I couldn't burn the adamantium off, and the shadows of my fire certainly wouldn't do much to it. I'd already seen I couldn't force my way out of the chains, and they were still tightened. Remembering this sent a small shudder across my body, reminding me of how the chains were pulling at my scales, peeling them off. Alright, so persuading a faerie dragon to free me might work, if they would get close enough to me. Even then, it would be pretty hard to convince them. And freeing myself? Ha.

I resigned myself to my fate. If on the slight chance Desperiona actually was in Hyjal, they wouldn't kill me when the battle ended... or would they? I was still technically the enemy. They wouldn't believe that I didn't want to be in the war. But I still wanted to live. I would do _anything_ to extend my life, perhaps a miracle would occur and free me. My throat hurt so much.

True to his word, the green wyrm came back an hour later. Though, I had no way of knowing it was an hour. It could have been four for all I knew. He returned in his elven form, carrying a few skins of water.

"I trust you are ready to speak?" I eyed him, warily.

"Yes"

"Begin then. Who were you to report to?"

"Desperiona, she's one of the fully grown of my kind" He nodded.

"And why were you coming here?" Even chained up, dying of thirst and hopeless as I was, I still managed to scoff, but my voice cracked through thirst. To a mortal, it was the equivalent of going two days without water. I truly was dieing.

"Why do you think? To fight _your_ flight" Was that a wince that just tugged at his lips?

"Good enough of an answer. Where is Desperiona?" I answered almost without skipping a beat. My mind quickly pulled something out of nowhere.

"Around Ragnaros' keep. The light keeps her hidden for the most part" He nodded.

"Good. I'm taking off the muzzle. If you even so much as bring a single spark of fire into your crop, I take away the water. I'll know, believe me. Understood, twilight?"

"Yes" He took out a waterskin, and took the muzzle off my head. Ah, that felt so much better. He placed the end of the water in my mouth, and held it up. I felt pathetically weak, needing to be _given_ water. I couldn't even drink of my own accord. Still, I couldn't argue with the water flowing down my throat, even if it was warm and disgusting. In no time I had drained all the water he brought, and he placed the muzzle back on, much to my despair.

"I will be sending Alysra to watch you next. Don't move" He smiled, clearly knowing the mental torment of not being able to move caused me. For the titans' sake, I was getting ground-sick already! Nothing severe, but still! I laid there, in a boredom-induced coma, when a green wyrm female set down next to me, walking over to me.

"I am Alysra. Hello, twilight drake" My thirst quenched, I managed to growl at her through my hunger.

"What do you want?"

"Right to the point, are we? Alright then" She stepped over to me, and whispered in my left ear-plate. "I want to let you go" She stepped back.

"W-what?" She stepped back in, and hissed to me in a shushed voice.

"Whisper! Do you want Ysera to hear you?"

"What do you mean you want to let me go?", I whispered.

"Ysera betrayed us all" Alysra's eyes twitched in anger under their lids. "This world fell apart while she took a nap, lost in her own domain. I pledged my allegiance to Ragnaros, and by extension, Deathwing" My heart started rising.

"So, you're going to let me go?" She shook her head.

"Not yet, not yet. That would arouse to much suspicion" She cocked her head sideways, as if listening to something. Or... FOR something. "Nothing, false alarm. Anyway, just hang in there. You have friends here"

"So, what exactly have you done here so far?"

"I have given the Firelord a servant of great power, Fandral Staghelm"

"I don't know him" Alysra sighed impatiently.

"_Fandral,_ played a vital role in Silithus, but, he uh, he lost his son. He went mad with grief, and had to be contained in the dream. The Nightmare almost got him, and now I have delivered him to be the next Majordomo of Ragnaros. That's the short version"

"Oh. So, when do you think you can free me?"

"Near the end of the battle. The Kingslayers, sadly, will allow the Guardians of Hyjal to push through into the Firelands. During the battle beforehand, I will free you"

"How is it good if they push into the Firelands?" I said, feigning allegiance to Deathwing. I wasn't strictly against him, but I sure as hells wasn't with him! Not after I had learned I had been manipulated and fooled by the ones that made Deathwing... Deathwing.

"They will be at the mercy of Ragnaros. He will annihilate them in his seat of power"

"Oh. That makes sense. How long before that happens?"

"A day, two days, three at the very most. Just hang in there, alright? I'll bring you food and water" Alysra turned tail, literally, and flew back towards the buildings. I let out a sigh of relief. So I was getting out of here. That was good to know. All I had to do was hold on tight to my sanity for the next few days, and Alysra would let me go. It still bothered me that a green dragon would go _against_ their aspect, but then I recalled that, here I was, a twilight drake, NOT on Deathwing's side.

With the prospect of death no longer hanging over my head, I allowed myself to relax. But, wait, what if Alysra won't- no, she will. Why else would she have whispered? Alright, but if she's discovered- then I'm screwed, I know that. But the odds of that are miniscule. I stopped the thought process in its tracks and turned to another one.

How would I convince Verthelion to leave the war? Sure, telling him he was brainwashed would be my, as the humans said, ace in the hole(Or something), but what if he wasn't convinced by that? Part of what made me realize I was fooled was the realization that my brood-mother hadn't abandoned me. Verthelion's brood-mother NEVER abandoned him, and he probably never thought so, either. It was custom for the natural-borns to be brought to where they would be, in our case, patrolling, to grow up. So what else could I use? I would have to get him to tell me what the Old Gods had told him, and work from there.

If he's still alive. No, no shut up! There was a chance he was dead, but I had to keep going. Hope was all I had. Even if it was false hope, it was still all I had left. I looked up at the noon sun, and sighed. It was going to be a _long_ one-to-three days. I closed my eyes, and tried to go to sleep. That would make the time pass faster. I didn't notice when I went to sleep, but it sure took a while to fall asleep, not like I had anything _else_ to be doing. I only noticed that my stomach had stopped its warbling for what seemed like seconds.

When I opened my eyes again, it was night. I was thirsty, yet again. Oh great. I slept through the entire day. I looked to my left, and would have jumped in shock if I could. There were several tents there, high and mighty, gray with some gold on the metal rods, and the symbol of a sun on the banners.

What was the Argent Crusade doing here? For that matter, _how in the name of the titans did they GET HERE?_

Part of my heart leaped at being able to see my friend again, but the odds that Amanthe was here... those odds were minimal, and I preferred not to think of that, but rather on the fact that I would have to be quick to find Verthelion, if he was still alive, and get him to (relative) safety. I would have to find the thick of the battle; if he was alive, that's where he was bound to be. It would be risky flying through it but, damn it, he's my mate, I don't have a choice! I closed my eyes again, not tired at all, but what else did I have to do?

After a few hours of closing my eyes and definitely NOT going to sleep, I felt someone poke my crest. My eyes were open in an instant, taking in the night. Oh. It was Alysra, poking me with a claw on her front leg.

"Oh, it's you" She nodded, before contracting to the form of a kaldorei. I noticed the food and water she had with her. She reached over, taking off the, ugh, muzzle. She gave me a slice of venison, which I gulped down greedily, as I did the water and the other pieces of meat. Once done, she put the wretched thing back on, standing up and returning to her true form. She leaned down next to my left ear-plate and whispered again.

"I have good news. The final battle is expected to take place tomorrow at night. You'll be freed then" My heart soared. Only one more day. Surely I could handle that.

"Good" Alysra turned around and flew back to the buildings. I sighed, and looked at the Argent tents again. One of the flaps on a tent farthest away pulled back, and a form stepped out. Impossible. The odds were a million to one, at the very least! Amanthe stepped out with another person, a human male in silver armor. She was still in the Argent robes I had last seen her in.

"Eric, exactly why are we out here?"

"It would be a good idea to get acquainted with the surroundings. Specifically, the thin air"

"We'll be fighting down the mountain, where the air isn't as thin"

"Yes, true. But it still wouldn't hurt, would it? Ysera's drakes have agreed to take us down, but we'll still be in thinner air than we're used to" I heard Amanthe sigh.

"I've been higher up than this before" I could tell she was remembering me. I smiled.

"When?"

"That's none of your business!", she snapped. Then sighed. "Come on, let's look around. Might as well get acquainted with the place"

"That's what I just said,"

"And now I'm repeating it. Come on, let's walk over there" She pointed towards me. I did a double take. Towards ME? No, no. Don't be foolish. The sun wasn't up yet, Amanthe couldn't see that far. Probably a coincidence. She and, who was the other? Eric? She and Eric walked over to me, turning on the road that went past me. Eric stopped to look at me.

"They have taken a prisoner, it seems. The war must be going well" I looked right at Amanthe, who was slowly widening her eyes. "Funny, the abomination seems to be looking at you, Amanthe" I snapped my vision to Eric, and growled.

"_She_", I said quietly, so quietly he didn't hear it. I turned my vision back to Amanthe, sending her a silent message: _Get me out_. I didn't care of Alysra was going to free me in not even twenty-four hours, I wanted out of those wretched chains! Amanthe spoke faintly.

"Come on, Eric, we should get going. Get used to the terrain as much as we can"

"Aye, we should. Here, follow me" Eric lead Amanthe down towards the world tree, but Amanthe's head kept on me. _Get me out_. She nodded to me. An hour later, she vanished, hidden by the spiraling roots of Nordrassil. I looked at the sun rising over the mountain peak, the rays of golden light filtering through the trees, the fluttering of tiny insects too and fro, squirrels and the like climbing up trees. It was a rather beautiful sight, and I sighed, looking at it. Today, I would be freed.

Green dragons were flying all over the sky, the vast majority heading down the mountain. A few drakes remained behind, practicing maneuvers and formations, making arrow heads, triangles, spheres, all sorts of formations, and all with their eyes closed. I noticed Alysra was leading them through the 'drills'. The Argent Crusaders came out of their tents and walked down to the kaldorei buildings, probably to prepare their weapons and such. Every now and then one of the paladins would shake their heads at me. The entire place was on red alert for battle, and I was absolutely bored out of my mind. I was too far away to see much of anything, and I couldn't move. I briefly thought about shifting to the twilight realm, thinking that would make me strong enough to break the chains, but no, not that either. I could only open a portal there, and it was rather impossible to open a portal on top of myself. I would just have to wait to be freed.

After a few hours of laying there, doing NOTHING, the drakes lined up in front of the Argent Crusade's tents. led by Alysra. The crusaders walked up, and each settled on a drake. I looked at Amanthe, as she got on with the greatest ease out of all the Argents. I smirked under the muzzle. No surprise there. All in all, there were maybe fifty crusaders, and half that many drakes, two passengers to one. The drakes took wing, soaring through the noon sky, and went down the mountain. After they all passed out of sight, Alysra walked over to me.

"Okay, good news for you, drake. The battle is occurring a bit earlier than we expected, so I'm freeing you now" My eyes widened in joy. She shifted to her mortal form and took off the muzzle. "Ysera had decided to take on the vast majority of your kin herself, so be aware of that" Verthelion... if he's in a battle with Ysera then time was of the essence. The chains holding my wings to my body came off, and I stretched them out to their full span, feeling the crack of a few bones that had been immobile far too long. The chains slowly came off of me, one by one, until I was freed. I bowed to her, dropping my head to my forelegs, stretching them out like feline might. Amanthe hadn't freed me, but I couldn't hold it against her. It was very probably she hadn't been able to get alone to come over to me. What mattered was that I was free.

"Thank you, I have to go, now!" I took off into the air. I was actually doing it. I was actually going to find Verthelion. After so long, I was finally going to be with him! I clambered up through the skies, nervous energy boiling inside of me. A green drake in front of me, a male, noticed me and tried to dive at me. I simply rose over him, and gripped his back, pushing off for extra speed. A few more tried to get in my path, but I brought flames into my crop.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" I breathed in and launched the fireball into my mouth, exhaling the air as it was about to leave my maw, resulting in a very wide stream of fire that engulfed a large area, the greens taking evasive action to avoid it and, as a result, clearing out of my path. Nobody would stop me.

Nobody.

I tumbled down the mountain side, passing the occasional green drake bearing two crusaders, but I was out of their reach before they could do anything. A flash of light illuminated my body, and I felt something warm searing my back, a blast of holy light. I shrugged it off, and continued my near free-fall. The smell of others of my flight reached my nostrils. Close, I was close. Just a little farther and I would reach them. Part of me wondered if the potion of nightmares knew I would have to face Ysera, and I laughed bitterly at this. The trees on the side of the mountain gave way to blackened earth. The smell of old-god corruption filled my nostrils, engulfing my being. I flew between abandoned cultist posts, all the fighters apparently having gone to one place. I pulled out of my shallow dive, turning around. I found another drake, this one of my kind, and flew up to her.

"Where is everyone?" She looked at me.

"Didn't you listen to Desperiona?" Oh wow. That was just unimaginably fortunate. _Don't think that_, some small part of my mind screamed at me. _She's going to die in this war for being here, and she had young! _Oh. I hadn't thought of it that way. That was... that was terrible. "We're going to fight Ysera"

"WHAT? That's suicide!"

"She's not invulnerable. Even aspects have limits"

"How many of our kind are going to her?"

"Everybody who can fight" My throat clenched. Just like in my nightmare, Verthelion was going to be facing off with an Aspect. I had no time to waste.

"Well, where is she?"

"Flying atop the Sulfuron keep. Come on, let's make haste!" The other drake put on a burst of speed. A part of me, the competitive part, urged me to fly faster than her, and so I did, beating my wings as fast as I could possibly coordinate them. I flew over armies at breakneck speed, cultists and druids and shaman and guardians fighting. I recognized Kolkna, blocking attacks and pushing back with so much force a cultist would fall on a comrade's weapon, Frizzle releasing waves of arcane energy, incinerating anyone who dared approach her and dispatching cultist spell casters from a range that was nothing short of impressive. A swirling bolt of arcane energy was launched from her hands heading... OH TITANS RIGHT AT ME! I swerved to the right, the magical blast sailing under my left wing. That one was too close. Slowly, the giant pillar of Sulfuron keep showed itself. I passed by the armies of the cult, and realization passed over me. There were about two dozen mortals here, dressed in armor and robes of all kinds, pushing at the cult armies from behind. The way they fought, holding off hundreds with ease, could mean only one thing.

The other Kingslayers were here, cutting off the cult's retreat.

I looked at the Sulfuron Keep, feeling the wafts of warm air from the lava pools raising me higher into the air. Volcanic gasses spilled to the sides, away from the center of the keep. Fire burned on the lava pools, and the keep itself was simply enormous.

Blocks of red and orange and black made up the foundation, a caged gate leading into the realm of the Firelord itself, the Firelands. But that wasn't my destination. I flew up, noticing the minor skirmishes along the keep's sides. Green drakes had engaged my own kind in one-on-one battles, and it looked like we were winning. That only hastened my ascent. I kept an eye out for Verthelion. Anywhere! I took a deep breath of the acrid air, multitudes of sensory information bombarding my brain, but only one mattered. There, that was his. He was higher up!

A green drake male smashed into my sides, sending me tumbling down. Of course, just my luck. He took a deep breath, and I heard a hissing sound from inside. I closed my eyes and mouth, turning my nostrils away as he launched a ball of venom at me, but without an orifice to enter, it spilled harmlessly off my scales into the lava far below. It was quite warm though, the result of a drake's response to overheating. He clawed at my wings, but I pulled them out of range. I fired a small blast at his left wing, tearing a hole in it. I repeated the process on the other side, making him destabilize and start falling. But he got the last laugh, by digging his claws into my flank, pulling me with him. The speed of the descent quickly tore the small gaps in his webbing into enormous holes, but that only made it worse. No matter how hard I flapped, I couldn't keep us both aloft as we fell towards a pool of lava, the drake's claws digging into my flesh.

"If I go, you go" No. NOBODY would stop me. Not even an aspect, definitely not a drake.

"I don't think so!" I took a breath and brought flames into my crop, spraying them all over his face and neck. The green screamed in pain and let go of me, and I instantly righted myself as he fell into a lava pool seconds later. A quick death, lava. Painful no doubt, but it was molten rock. If that didn't kill you near instantly, nothing did. I took a deep breath and resumed my ascent, this time making sure nobody attacked me. I reached the top of the spire.

There she was.

Ysera, Aspect of the Green dragonflight, sister to the Dragonqueen. She looked exactly like she had in my nightmare, and swarms of twilight drakes surrounded her. She let loose breath after breath, each one that found its mark making the victim fall, either dead or unconscious. She changed her attack repeatedly, sometimes a thick sludge that was undoubtedly poison, sometimes a hazy green cloud that probably put the victim to sleep, making them fall into the lava below. The drakes continued to dodge her breaths, pelting her with blasts, each one absorbed the same way it had been in my nightmare. I was reliving it.

I looked around for Verthelion frantically. He HAD to still be alive. He simply HAD to. I quickly let gravity claim me, Ysera's spray of poison sailing over my horns, before I returned to flight. Ysera stopped letting out breath attacks, and took a very deep breath, green lightning flashing through the sky. Oh no. I quickly hid, making it so she couldn't see me. Most of the other drakes saw me do this and did the same, hiding as an explosion of green light rocked the top of Sulfuron Keep, brightly contrasting against the red volcanic clouds hanging in the air.

Not to mention all the stuff on fire.

I came out from my hiding spot, followed by all the others who hid. Quickly we broke into formations again, me doing it without even realizing what I was doing. I took to the air high above the fight, looking down furiously. Another drake had joined the battle, hovering at the edges. Against the bright light of the lava below he looked very dark, and was about my size. He was sending a feeling of dread down my spine, but that didn't matter. I'd found Verthelion. And Ysera was facing him, about to fire a breath. He wouldn't be able to dodge this one.

_NO!_

I screamed and instantly dove at him, determined to shove him out of the way of Ysera's breath just like I had in the dream. The angle he was at meant I would send us flying into the hills, but that didn't matter. I needed to get him out of there, because there was no way he could dodge this on his own. Ysera opened her mouth as if to finalize it. Green light burned deep down in her gargantuan crop. I pushed the air as fast as I could, anything to get to him before Ysera.

Time slowed down. I felt like I was flying through liquid. It was only for a moment, but it stretched into an eternity. The other drake was facing me. Then it happened.

A full grown bronze dragon female appeared out of nowhere, falling onto the drake, catching him in her claws, pushing him out of the battle. The world sped back to normality, and she called out in that voice I had heard discussing with Jeziba, before she passed out of sight.

"Ysera! NO!" But it was too late. A stream of green fluid washed over Verthelion, entering his body, passing just as I crashed into him.

It all happened faster than I could register. I recalled the heat of the keep behind me fading, Verthelion's limp body in my claws, hurtling towards a few dead trees on a hill, cinders. I crashed into the ground, our momentum sending us rolling over each other until he came to a stop against a rock, in a narrow canyon with high walls four meters wide and ten meters tall, shaped like somebody had taken a giant spear, impaled it into the earth and made an 'L' shape, before cutting off the ends so that you could enter. I got off of him, nuzzling his face. He didn't move.

"Verthelion?" I pushed at him again. He didn't move. "Alright, if this is a joke, you can stop" A feeling of desperation started to enter me. I pushed at him, harder this time. "Verthelion, stop it! Wake up, please!" He wasn't breathing. I waited ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. "No, no you can't be dead. Don't do this to me!" I leaned down next to his chest, listening for a heart beat. Nothing. He wasn't faking it. My world shattered.

I was too late. Ysera had killed Verthelion. I flopped down next to his limp body, his corpse, and shuddered, trying to suppress the emotions bursting up through me, all the suppressed despair and sadness in my life. I'd had so much hope, I had been so confident I would save him, and then, and then, oh I don't know! I had an argument half-prepared for him, I had faced my darkest fear of him hating me, but now, just like that, it had all been ruined.

"Verthelion please! I came across the world for you! We, we're clutch-mates, best friends, destined mates! We were the ones chosen to have our aging accelerated please don't do this to me!" He wasn't moving. I shoved against him again, spreading out my wings like a veil, as if that would bring him back to life. Slowly I stopped, leaning against him, tears coming out. "You can't, you can't die. Please, you can't die, because, because..." I took a deep breath, giving up on holding in the whirlwind of feelings. All my grief, all my sadness, my despair, throughout my entire life came up. I cried onto his side. "Please, Verthelion. I, I love you" I raised my head to the heavens and roared my sorrow, before flopping down, resting next to him, emotionally spent, and physically spent as well from flying full speed for I don't know how long

I had failed. It had all happened so fast, I still couldn't truly realize it.

I had failed.

_You are a failure, Selriona!_ Valiona's voice resonated in my ears. Let it. I didn't care anymore.

I don't know how long I was there, begging all the deities in existence for a miracle, the titans, the old gods, hells, even the demons, to no avail. After what must have been a few hours, I heard the whooshing of gigantic wings, so big it could only be one thing. An Aspect. There were smaller flaps too, probably belonging to wyrm. I looked back, at _her_. She was in a form that could only vaguely be called night-elven, unnaturally tall, walking into the small canyon so as to almost cut off my escape. Green robes shimmered around her, a cloak stretching down from her green hair. Her eyes were open, shimmering colors swirling around in them, hurting my mind. Horns were retained, stretching behind her head, and she was walking towards me.

Ysera.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	21. Chapter 21:Confused

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta-ing this!**

* * *

><p>Ysera had killed Verthelion.<p>

Ysera had killed my mate.

She stopped three meters from me.

"You killed him..." I hissed at her.

"And why wouldn't I have? He attacked me."

I snapped. "YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO KILL HIM! You, you could've knocked him out or, or, or ANYTHING!" My anger simmered under my skin. I hated her. I wanted to kill her. But I wasn't stupid. Ysera was an Aspect, a fully grown wyrm easily sixty thousand years old, if not more, leader of a flight, with powers given to her by the all-powerful titaness Eonar. I shook in anger. Eonar had directly empowered Ysera. There was no way I had a chance against her. She could kill me with a word, send me into an eternal sleep, both literally and metaphorically, whichever one she wished.

"And why would I have done that? Your kind are twisted," That shot more fury through me. "corrupted," I began to see red. "heartless," I curled my tail out from under my legs. "monsters." My temper broke.

I pounced at Ysera.

For a moment Ysera's eyebrows lifted, as if she couldn't believe I would do something as completely and utterly stupid as I did. In hindsight, I can't believe I did that either. Halfway to her, Ysera's shock faded and she held out a hand, making the silent gesture to stop. A blast of green lightning erupted from her hand, stopping my forward motion entirely and sending me spinning into the canyon wall, making me fall on top of Verthelion.

"You killed him! I HATE YOU!" I brought flames into my crop, and pounced at her again. She held out a hand again, blasting me back the same way, but I still managed to fire a blast at her. It sailed right through Ysera as she became intangible, shifting into her dream. "I'LL KILL YOU!" I roared, bringing a steady stream of flames out at Ysera. She surrounded herself in a shimmering green sphere, the flames deflecting harmlessly around it. I kept the stream up, approaching her as I did. When the stream ended, Ysera lowered her barrier, and I spun around and whipped my tail-club at her as fast as I could.

It still wasn't fast enough.

Ysera caught my tail right below the base of the club in one hand, and lifted up, a magical force lifting me up as she did, before throwing me back into the canyon wall, cracking my head on the stone, stunning me. I collapsed next to Verthelion, and started to cry again, my will to fight suddenly depleted. Let her kill me. I didn't care anymore. Ysera walked closer and stopped right next to me. I looked up at her as she raised her hands, green light intensifying. I stared into it. Let me die. It didn't matter anymore.

"Stop!"

A gnome ran in between me and Ysera, stopping briefly to curtsy to her, but then continuing her rambling. "Lady Ysera, don't kill her, please no, just let me explain."

It was that bronze dragon. What was she doing here? Ysera lowered her hands, the built up magic fading. "What is your name?"

"I'm Chronormu, and, and you can't kill Selriona. We, we need her alive."

"Why? She is nothing more than another twilight drake."

"That's the thing though, she's not. She was supposed to save her mate, to save Verthelion, but, um, she didn't. It's bad enough he died, but if Selriona died as well, it would be a disaster." Chronormu made a big show about 'disaster', waving her hands in an arc over her head. "So, just leave me here with Selriona, go finish up the aftermath of the battle, and I'll try to see if a paradox can still be stopped."

Ysera shook her head, placing one hand onto her forehead. "I will never understand the bronze as long as I live. If you say she needs to live, so be it." Ysera turned around, walked out of the canyon, and vanished.

I jumped at Chronormu, pinning her below me with one paw, keeping my weight off her gnomish illusion. "Why would you spare me? WELL? I wish to die. I don't have any reason to live."

"Selriona listen to me. We can still save him!"

I pushed on her with force. "HOW? He's dead! Unless you can bring him back to life —"

"We can take you back in time, save him then!"

That froze me, and the bronze used this opportunity to escape. "We, we can?" I was stunned.

"Yes, we can and we will. Just, don't do anything rash. He's dead, yes, but he wasn't supposed to have died. The timeline was messed with, which means we can go back and save him properly this time. He won't be dead for long."

I listened intently. "What do I need to do?"

Chronormu chuckled. "First, walk out of the canyon. I can't lower my illusion in here, can I?"

I nodded and obeyed, leaving Chronormu behind me. Once I was outside, Chronormu walked a good distance from me. She shimmered, the red light from the keep in the distance refracting around her, bending, swirling around her, and changing to a more yellow-ish color. The whirl of light grew until it was the size Valiona had been, before fading and revealing a female bronze wyrm. Amber scales reflected Sulfuron keep's light, giving them an orange hue. If I looked closely, it seemed like the scales changed position with each other.

Then my instincts kicked in. SHIT A BRONZE WYRM!

I lowered my body to the ground, ready to blast her.

"Easy Selriona, I'm on your side, remember? Now, I'm going to teleport us to Tanaris."

"I thought we were going back in time!"

Chronormu gave me a toothy grin. "Oh, we are, but how else are we going to reach the Caverns of time?"

"The WHAT?"

She walked over to me, making a big show of stepping heavily to make the ground shake a little.

"Our home. Now, let's go."

She placed a claw over on my left foreleg, and the world exploded. Yellow light engulfed me. I floated in the air, surrounded by a vortex of light, Chronormu being the only other thing with me. Then I landed.

The first thing I noticed was the sand my legs had submerged themselves in. The next thing I noticed was the heat, and the mountains that seemed to imprison me, save for a cleverly hidden pass on a side. The third thing I noticed was the fact that I was, save for my head, completely buried in the sand!

"You tricked me!"

Chronormu looked over at me, raising her buried legs out of the sand. "Oh, my bad. I'm sorry, I always like to teleport myself somewhat into the sand, feels amazing on my scales. It's just that you're... shorter... than I am."

I slowly clawed my way up through the sand. A foreleg burst out, found purchase in the sand, and I pulled myself out like a tunneling worm unburrowing. I shook the sand clinging to me off.

"I don't know how that can feel amazing. It's stuck under my scales."

Chronormu shrugged, wings going up and down. "Feels great to me", she muttered under her breath, before looking back at me. "Ah, the entrance to the caverns is right over there, come on." She took wing and started flying for a certain mountain, and I followed her, setting down next to it. Chronormu's form shimmered and she contracted into her gnomish form.

"Why do you choose to be a gnome?"

"It helps me get a perspective on things better, being the smallest of the mortal races. Not to mention, there's a certain... comedic element"

"Comedic element?"

Chronormu laughed. "It doesn't matter. Anyway, you can choose whatever form you want to be in, follow me." She walked into a hole in the side, and I followed her. When I walked inside, my legs forgot to keep myself up.

The caverns were simply enormous, and this was just looking at the tunnel leading down into the depths. Rocks shimmered in all colors, a bright contrast to the floor of sand. Streams of blue energy flowed along the walls, like a river might along the ground, but instead of crashing down the irregularities on the tunnel, these streams simply moved with them, as if they were part of the tunnel itself, and the way the tunnel itself stretched...

"Selriona? Are you alright"

"Umuhguh." I had seen and felt infinity. Why this baffled me made no sense.

The gnome beside me chuckled. "Everyone has that reaction at first. Come on, lets go down."

I shook myself out of my stupor and focused on the bronze dragon right in front of me — oh, hells. Chronormu bowed to him.

"Tick, you're watching the entrance today?"

'Tick' nodded. "Yes, indeed." He saw me and grinned. "Ah, Selriona. Chronormu, what has happened that you needed to bring her here right after she saved Verthelion?"

Those words stung. I growled at him. "I didn't save him. He died."

Tick's pupils slitted further for a moment. "But, that's impossible. How did — oh. Those bastards."

Chronormu nodded to him. "Yes, they got to her first. Anyway, I'm bringing her here so that we can go back and make things right this time."

Tick nodded, and flickered for an instant. "I've sent word down the tunnels, informing the guards. They won't attack her."

Chronormu smiled, bowing to Tick. "Thanks! Come on Selriona, let's go into the main room."

I nodded, and walked after her as she moved down the twisting tunnels. For a gnome she kept a fast pace. We turned a corner, and I stopped in my tracks. The tunnel went down at a sharp ninety-degree angle, the floor of sand curving down, somehow stuck. Chronormu must have noticed my shock.

"Ah, don't worry about that. Just a little gravity play. Come on, follow me." She walked over the edge and straight down the tunnel. I gulped, and went after her. The moment I did, my world turned over and suddenly, I was still standing upright. Whoa. I continued after my bronze guide, occasionally passing two towering bronze drakonids on patrol, who simply nodded to me. I was getting more and more nervous as I went further. After all, I was supposed to be their enemy. But... if they were leaving me alone like this, then maybe I wasn't at some point in time.

I caught sight of a break in the walls, and looked out. And gasped. Outside was the Great Dark Beyond, meteors tumbling through in thick lanes, other worlds laid out before me.

Chronormu pulled me back from the scene. "I wouldn't do that. It can break your mind pretty easily"

"I managed to see all of existence in one moment."

"You were lucky the temporal rift didn't shatter your mind. Any longer and it probably would have."

"Wait, how did you know about — oh forget it. I probably tell you some time in the future, don't I?"

This made the gnome smile. "Correct! Now, come on, the main chamber's right this way. I'll explain the situation there." She led me through a narrow turn I could only barely squeeze through, but which she handled no problem.

I forgot Verthelion, I forgot my name, I forgot how to breathe for a few seconds.

The main chamber was maybe a kilometer across, and would have been a rough half-sphere if not for the fact that it looked like someone had broken off the top half and opened it into the Great Dark beyond. The blue stream that had flowed along the tunnel we took here travelled along the walls, at some point becoming a blood red stream. Drakonids patrolled everywhere, and in the center was a dial with a bronze dragon male resting on it. On the dial floated an enormous apparatus with several glass chambers suspended by, go figure, bronze. Sand filled the smaller glass chambers near the top and bottom, which flowed into a central, larger chamber. This resulted in the bottom half having sand flowing up, but seeing as how the universe was literally right there infront of me, I decided to let it slide. What was curious, however, was that the sand never ran out, but never overflowed either, it stayed a constant level.

"W-w-w-w-w—"

"Selriona, relax. You're with me, I'll guide you through. If you see something you don't understand, um, just smile and nod, alright?"

I took one more look at the chamber.

I smiled and nodded.

"Okay, now, you need a little explanation as to what happened. Now, um. You, were supposed to save Verthelion. You were supposed to have pushed him out of the way of the poison breath and saved his life. Now, that clearly didn't happen." I felt a tear drip onto the sand. "Hey, it's all right, he's not going to be dead for long, because we will fix this."

I nodded. "Alright. How do I fix it?"

"Well, let me start at the beginning. You know the charge of the bronze, right?"

I nodded. "To keep watch over time, right?"

She nodded. "Correct. Now, lately we've been having... issues."

"What kind of... issues?"

"There's this group of dragonkin calling themselves the Infinite flight. They have powers identical to our own, but they are intent on ruining history, and we're frantically trying to repair the damage they are causing. I believe you've already met one of their more powerful agents, the Epoch Hunter?"

I froze. "HIM?"

Chronormu nodded. "Yes. You see, Verthelion becomes... somewhat... important later, let's leave it at that." She spoke slowly, probably picking how best to explain it without giving away too much of the future. "First, they tried to kill you before you could save him. After all, if you're dead, you can't exactly help him, can you? Their second attempt was the same. Now, the third one, that was the one that actually worked. One of their drakes managed to reach the battle against Ysera. They slowed you down, so that you were too late to save Verthelion, and he died. I tried to get there as soon as I could, but they had wards up against us."

"What do you mean, wards?"

"Well, you've already overheard how my mortal friend Jeziba and I kept wards around you in Stormwind, yes?" I nodded. "Well, similarly, we dispatched an agent to Hyjal, one of our best wyrms, Aeonus. He was to keep the Infinite out of Hyjal. But things went... Wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"He became one of the Infinite."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Well, we've noticed that the Infinite are the results of our kin that have been corrupted somehow. The Kingslayers barely managed to save one of our dragonspawn from being corrupted when the Infinite attempted to stop the Culling of Stratholme. There's still the question of who is corrupting us. The main theory we have is that a bronze dragon is corrupted, and becomes Infinite, and some time in the future their Infinite self goes back in time to corrupt their past, bronze selves, resulting in a time loop. That's what we believe happened to Aeonus. And after he became corrupted, he turned the wards that kept the Infinite out into wards that kept US out. He let me in after he was certain it was too late and, damn it, he was right." Chronormu started clenching her fists, but relaxed.

"So basically I'm caught in the middle of two groups of time-controlling dragonflights, one of whom wants Verthelion dead, and one of whom actually wants to help me, but can turn into the ones that want to kill my mate, which they succeeded in doing, but now we're going back in time to stop them. Exactly how am I going to do this on my own?"

"The summary? Spot on. And you're not doing this on your own. Come on, fly over to the other side of the chamber. My past self will be waiting for you there."

"Will I need to explain it to your past self?"

Chronormu laughed. "Oh not at all, not at all. Just, go on over,"

"Got it" I jumped up, hovering briefly in the air, before sailing over to the far side of the chamber. I looked around in sheer amazement at the caverns. It boggled my mind. Not to mention that I was now going to Chronormu's past self. I sailed around the hourglass, and looked down. To my complete and utter shock, there was Chronormu in her true form, next to a full grown twilight dragon female, light violet in color and slightly larger than the lithe bronze, sitting down on the sand, looking at the hourglass. The other twilight dragon looked at me and nodded.

Just smile and nod.

I thought about setting down there, but no, she'd told me to go to the other side. This was halfway there. Probably another version of her. The bronze dragonflight was already giving me a migraine.

I eventually saw a small gnome waving at me amidst the sea of sand, and I set down next to her.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, there were other times the Infinite interfered with your life."

"How did you forget? If what I'm getting here is right and you're the other Chronormu's past self, you haven't said it yet!"

"Yes but you've already heard it. So anyway, the other time was, well, remember when that druid spared your life in the Wetlands?"

I winced. "Don't remind me."

"She would have been sympathetic enough to spare you on her own, but the Infinite got to her before we could and ruined her childhood, making her more cold-hearted. I had to give her a sympathy accelerator to save your life."

"Wait a second. Sympathy accelerator..." I stared at her. "Chromie?"

Chromie smiled. "Yes, well, that's the name I go by in this form. Anyway, the other time the Infinite messed with you was almost immediately after. We're still not completely sure what they did, but you would normally have gone to Stormwind by yourself. We had to give you a slight nudge in that direction"

My right eye twitched. "My brain hurts..."

"Don't worry about it. Come on, your help's right over here." Chromie turned to a section of wall, which did the weirdest thing ever. It crumbled like parchment, giving way, the rock bending back and elongating, sand filling it out of nowhere, stretching back into a tunnel. The solid rock bending and shifting like it were in a dream shattered any sense of direction I had left.

I passed out.

When I woke up, there were several others facing me, four mortals if I counted correct. I roared in panic and jumped backwards, and quickly analyzed the group. I calmed when I saw that Chromie stood in front of the four.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The one on my left, was a male orc. His body bore the standard green skin after the 'little problem' with the demonic corruption. His blue eyes shone with joy as he lifted his shaven head in pride. He wielded red jagged armor, like someone had taken the spikes off of a red dragon and stuck them on him. He wielded a sword that made my skin crawl; it was a one-handed model of Kolkna's sword. On his back was a large shield as large as his torso, inscribed with what I'd learned from Amanthe to be the symbol of the Liberality Confederacy, the symbol of the Alliance meshed with that of the Horde, under a crossed sword and staff.

The next one was a human female, young, with black hair that had been cut short, matching her dark black eyes. She wore regal brown and black leather clothing over her, finely crafted, with the symbol of the Gilnean kingdom on her left shoulder, a shield embroidered with roses, an animal skull resting over it with two candles on either side. She had two daggers in their sheaths, curved slightly, and on her waist she had a belt filled with all sorts of vials and mixtures, some of which were frothing in the containers. She held her head high and proud, and had a slightly upturned nose.

The third one was a male blood elf barely into adulthood, with hair the color of the sunset, and green eyes that sparkled with mischief. He wore simple scarlet, blood red robes, those of an apprentice warlock, but that must have been a ruse, because the staff he bore strapped to his back was patterned purple, blue and black, and had a vicious, cruel design, a violet crystal rotating in the middle of the crown of the staff, blue flames flickering around it, all in all looking very professional. Besides him snorted a felhound, sniffing the bottom of his robes. He held out his hands and cracked his fingers.

The final one, on the farthest right, was a night elf with green hair and eyes. She had the black tattoo of a hawk around each eye, and wore brown leather clothing, covered in green, patterned to look like ground in a forest. She carried a filled pack on her back, and was holding a bow in her left hand, the same bow that a dwarven hunter had used against me so, so long ago. At her side lay a large feline, some species of mountain lion if I had to guess, with gray fur and large fangs sticking out of the top of its mouth.

The orc stepped forward. "I am Droga Swordbreaker, this is Katalyn Greymane," he gestured to the human female, "Mariel Shadowray," he sneered as he said the blood elf's name, "and Ellemayne Glaivewing." He turned his attention to Chromie. "So what is going on here?" An instant passed. "Oh."

The blood elf snickered. "So... Aeonus. I guess you could say that the Black Morass —"

Groans came from everyone else.

Katalyn urged him, "Shut up shut up don't say it don't you fucking dare say it!"

Mariel held up his hands. "I won't, don't worry."

"Good."

" — was merely a setback." He finished his previous sentence, grinning like a lunatic. Groans from everyone else. Even the feline put its paws over its eyes.

Chromie rolled her eyes. "Anyway, Selriona, you need a few introductions. They are from the Liberality Confederacy, but save for Ellemayne, none of them are Kingslayers. In fact, they are all actually from three centuries after I pulled you here. Droga here is the descendant of Kolkna."

I flinched. "Oh."

"Katalyn is the second in line for the Greymane throne, and Mariel is, well..." She coughed. "Mariel."

"I take offense to that."

"They all know of the deeds those before them did. Every bit as skilled, too."

"Wait, shouldn't you explain the situation to them?"

"I already did, I froze time and explained it."

I sighed. My brain still hurt.

"At any rate, there's only one person we're waiting for, then you should be ready to go." Chromie began muttering under her breath. "That's what the projections say, at any rate." I heard the trudging of feet on sand, and turned around. I sucked in a breath. There, pushing her feet across the sand, wearing purple robes like I had the first time I entered my mortal form, was...

"Amanthe?"

She looked up at me and smiled, but it seemed forced. Her eyes were bloodshot, and I saw tear streaks on her face.

"Hey, Selriona." Her voice was quiet, like she was afraid of speaking.

"Amanthe, what are you doing here?"

"It's a long, long story. We'll have plenty of time in Hyjal. I hope." She didn't sound hopeful.

"It's so good to see you, how long has it been since you last saw me?"

"Little more than an hour, by my internal clock. But that doesn't mean a lot in here, does it?"

"Wait, how old are you?"

"I'm about three centuries old, little age magic." She wiggled her fingers and smiled, but again, it seemed forced. I was surprised at this.

So Amanthe lived a long, long time. Good to know.

"Oh, good to know,"

Chromie clapped. "Alright then, that's everyone. Now, here's what's going to happen. Aeonus' wards are already in place, so the tunnel here won't be able to bring you directly to the time you need. I'm bringing you as close as I can, which is three days off and at the very top of the mountain. You'll need to work your way down the mountain towards Sulfuron Keep while fending off any Infinite that attack you. The battle for Hyjal will be in full bloom, so you'll have to be careful while you make your way down the mountain. Once you're near the keep, place this beacon…" Chromie held out her hand, and some of the sand on the ground rose, swirling in her hands to form a device. It was a gray hexagon, with a little hemisphere in the middle on one side, surrounded by nine small yellow triangles. The hemisphere glowed with bronze light. "… on the ground, and activate it. I'll be able to come through then and help you. Your future selves have told me what happens there. Selriona, you'll need to take care of the drake that slowed you down, and then 'merge' with your past self. You'll know how to do it when you have to."

I nodded. "Understood."

"You five will have to battle Aeonus. You will NOT be able to kill him, though. He's destined to die in the Black Morass." Chromie sighed at the topic of killing Aeonus. "Simply cause him to retreat. I will be there to handle... Myself."

This brought a shouted 'WHAT?' from all six of us.

Chromie nodded. "At some point in the future, I become one of the Infinite. I go to Hyjal and try to kill Verthelion, but my bronze self stops my Infinite self, killing her. I kill myself, essentially." Chromie shuddered, whether it was because she was faced with the prospect of killing herself or whether she'd already done it and had horrible memories of the encounter, I couldn't tell.

Droga nodded. "Alright, so we need to enter Hyjal, escort Selriona to Sulfuron Keep and plant the beacon. You'll deal with your Infinite self, Selriona deals with her drake, and we handle Aeonus. Sounds simple enough."

Ellemayne nodded. "Yes, it does. We have three days to reach the location, if I am correct. However, we will probably be besieged by the Infinite, not to mention being caught in the crossfire of the battle. We will have to move quickly."

"Why couldn't I just fly them down to the keep?", I asked.

Katalyn shook her head. "Are you insane? Splitting up like that would make us prime targets for Infinite assassination. We need to stick together, and unless you want to try to fly all five of us and Ellemayne's pet —"

"His name is Fluffy!" Said night elf knelt down by Fluffy's head and started scratching it. "Who's a good boy? You are, yes you are!"

Amanthe sighed and walked next to me, whispering in my ear-plate. "We are doomed."

I laughed. "Yes, yes we are."

Katalyn sighed. "Yes, Fluffy. As I was saying, we need to stick together. And that means taking the long way around. We should get going soon. Pardon the pun, but time is of the essence."

Mariel snickered.

Chromie nodded. "Walk that way through the tunnel, you'll arrive at your destination. It'll close behind you." She handed the beacon to Droga. "Remember, plant this at Sulfuron Keep. I'll come and aid you. Other than that though, you are on your own. Aeonus will be operating from inside a time pocket. Ellemayne, you know what that is like. I operated from one in Andorhal. You'll know how to find it. Remember, this is our emergency back up plan. Failure isn't an option. If you fail, a paradox will occur, and that will shatter our universe, and we will ALL die."

Ellemayne nodded. "Alright team, let's move." She started down the tunnel, 'Fluffy' right behind her.

Mariel turned around next. He clenched his fist in the air and the felhound yipped. It jumped up as if bitten before starting after him. Katalyn walked after them, head held high, Droga right next to her.

Amanthe sighed, and looked at me. "Just like old times, huh?"

"What are you talking about?" We both started walking.

"Oh, that's, that's right. It's not 'old times' for you yet." She gave another forced smile.

"Amanthe, is something wrong? You seem quiet, and all your smiles look forced." She took a shaky breath.

"No, no nothing's wrong. I'm just nervous. I mean, the last time I've fought the Infinite was three centuries ago for me."

"You're lying about why you're nervous."

She laughed quickly, but even that seemed forced. "Looks like the shoe's on the other foot, isn't it? Look, don't worry about me. We're going to go find Verthelion, we're going to make sure your past self saves him, everything is going to be just fine —" Her voice cracked, but I let it go.

We continued walking up the tunnel. Slowly the blue streaks of light flowing along it faded. The smell of sand shifted into the smell of nature and high altitude. The other four stopped in front of the exit, where birds chirped. I walked up and looked down. Oh hells, that really messed with my sense of reality. We stood at the summit of Mount Hyjal, looking at the world tree... from its height. There was no ground below us. The tunnel end was suspended in mid air some one and a half kilometers above the surface.

Katalyn gave a long, drawn-out whistle. Amanthe looked down, unfazed.

Mariel scratched his head. "Okay, well, now what?"

Amanthe nodded. "Well, Selriona can go down no problem, and I can give the rest of us a levitation enchantment. We can drift down."

Ellemayne nodded. "A fine plan. Let's get going. From my past experiences in the caverns of the bronze, our time has already started ticking away"

"One second, I just need to prepare." Amanthe took a deep breath, holding her hands out to the sides, muttering words under her breath rapidly. Everyone but me, including Fluffy and the felhunter, lifted into the air, swinging their arms to balance. They stopped one third of a meter up. Amanthe floated over to the edge of the tunnel, and looked down. Droga huffed.

"We're wasting time. Let's go and be done with this!" He jumped, and started floating down. The others were right behind him. Mariel pushed his felhound down. Ellemayne picked Fluffy up in her arms, or, well, as much as she could with Fluffy levitating over her, and stepped over the side. Katalyn jumped over, spinning in the air, and Amanthe simply walked over. I flapped, hovering over the sands, and flew out over the tunnel. Instantly the mouth of the Caverns of Time vanished from sight.

We were on our own.

I slowly hovered closer and closer to the ground, keeping up with the others. Droga crossed his arms, his sword in a sheath. The descendant of Kolkna. Oh great, that was going to end well, I knew it.

Katalyn stretched her legs out as far as they would go, arms to the side. She looked down, probably gauging how much time before she hit the ground.

Mariel's felhound made all sorts of demonic noises, thrashing and spinning in midair, unlike his master who spun voluntarily. Instead of making demonic noises, he appeared to enjoy it very much.

Ellamayne descended the same way as Katalyn, and Amanthe simply stood straight up. She looked at me, meeting my eyes for an instant, before looking away. What was with her? Part of my mind smacked the other part for being so foolish. This Amanthe was over three hundred years old. She'd had plenty of time for a personality change, that was probably all it was.

So why did I get the feeling there was more to it?

I landed, looking as the others did so. A meter above the ground, everyone's levitation enchantment faded. Droga landed, his arms coming out to the side as he fell to his knees. Katalyn and Ellamayne both rolled as they hit the ground, absorbing the shock. Mariel fell on his back, his felhound landing on his stomach, squealing in pain and triggering a gasp from the warlock. For a moment he had shadows flickering around his hands and his teeth gritted, like he were trying to maintain control over something. Then he stopped, and got up, shoving off the demon. Amanthe landed and simply stood up. Fluffy landed with a little mewl of fear, but was otherwise un-harmed.

I looked around. We stood on the rim of the little crater that housed Nordrassil, and even from these distances I heard the rumbling of earth elementals close to the tree. However, no sooner had we landed then the earth around us rumbled. Everyone took up battle stances, and we looked around.

One portal opened in front of us, flanked by two more, and one behind us. Each portal was the same: outline of bronze, black middle with bronze swirls in the middle.

Droga growled. "Not a step on Hyjal, and already we are attacked?"

Out of the two side portals, came three Infinite dragonspawn each, flanking each other. Out of the portal behind us, two towering Infinite drakonids appeared. And out of the portal in front of us came the worst of it all; a dragonspawn general, far larger than the others, with large, leathery wings that spanned the area, reaching into the two other portals.

He spoke with the same echo that the Epoch Hunter had. "Why do you protect the twilight drake? Do you not remember the horror their flight has caused, the unspeakable atrocities under their master? You can still stop it. Flee here, and your lives will continue without interference."

Droga laughed mockingly at the general, drawing his sword and shield. "Nice try, scum. We know that their fate is in our best interests. Defend yourself! Lok'tar ogar!"

Droga charged the general, and all hell broke lose.

* * *

><p><strong><strong>'Puts on Back to the Future theme music'<strong>_  
><em>**

**Review, let me know what you think!**


	22. Chapter 22:Escorted

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Huge thanks once again to Dusty the Umbravita for betaing this.**

* * *

><p>The funny thing? As Droga charged, everyone but me knew the plan.<p>

Droga charged at the dragonspawn general who clutched two axes with his clawed hands. He brought one axe down in a cleave to Droga's spine, simultaneously whirling the other axe in a horizontal slash. Droga deflected the horizontal slash with his shield and the parried the verticle strike with his sword, buckling under the force but holding his ground.

Katalyn took out a green vial from her belt and threw it at a female dragonspawn. The glass shattered in her face and the contents clouded around her face, and she collapsed to the ground. Katalyn drew her daggers and engaged the other male dragonspawn from the same portal. Fur grew along her body, her nails sharpened into claws, and she turned into a worgen. One of the dragonspawn she fought, curiously enough, had a felhound attached to its back.

Ellemayne had jumped to a ledge a moment before, and fired arrows at one of the other dragonspawn, which stuck in his armor. She drew back another arrow, this one with fire burning on its tip, and launched it, embedding into the armor like the ones before it. In an instant it released a fiery hot explosion, burning off the wooden shaft and turning the black armor red hot. It exploded again an split second later, sending bits of armor flying off and horribly burning the dragonspawn's face. Fluffy latched onto another dragonspawn's face, clawing and biting relentlessly as his victim tried to get the feline off.

Mariel was in a trance, Shadows mixed around his hands, and darkened the air. He held on to them, and charged them up.

The two drakonids behind me started after me, spinning their spears in loops, when one of them suddenly dropped to the ground and swung its spear at the other's legs, forcing it to fall down. The drakonid that had attacked its comrade attacked it furiously as if in a crazed rage. I looked back at Amanthe. Her eyes were closed, twitching as if in a dream, Shadow energy flickered around her entire form. I looked back at Droga, who had engaged the dragonspawn general one-on-one.

He seemed to be in a fairly even fight, the general's two axes against Droga's sword and shield. One would attempt to score a hit, only to find themselves blocked, before having to defend against a counter-attack. I decided to help him out, and briefly taking to the air, I landed on the general's back, in between his two wings, the silver cracks singing my paws. The surprise resulted in the general failing to block Droga's next attack, and the sword cut a large gash along his torso. I brought flames into my crop, and took a deep breath, allowing myself an instant to survey the battle.

Katalyn's handiwork was evident in the dragonspawn that had been sliced up by her knives to the point of barely being in one piece, and the one she had poisoned was still twitching on the ground. Mariel's felhound was en route to the general, and the warlock himself looked about ready to unleash whatever spell he had been casting. Amanthe was still in her trance. Ellemayne, still atop the ledge, aimed another arrow at one of the drakonids, whom were tearing each other apart. One of them was filled with wounds and gashes, obviously losing, but each time it took a hit, it only stumbled from the momentum of the strike. The bodies of the dragonspawn that had tried to gut Amanthe while she was in her trance were filled with arrows. I nodded, and looked back down at the general.

I breathed out, and let my flames up through my mouth, finding purchase along the general's back, erupting the black, hardened scales into dark blue flame. He screeched, and thrashed at Droga, attacking him with such force that Droga was thrown aside. But the damage was done. I hovered a short distance above the general, pelting him with more fire and immolating his entire back. Meanwhile, one of the drakonids struck the other in the heart, making the towering dragonkin collapse without a sound before it ripped an arrow out of its arm with a snarl, snapping Amanthe out of her trance.

Just then, Mariel unleashed his spell.

The remaining drakonid collapsed to his knees, panting heavily, as the cracks on his skin shimmered and blacked out from time to time. Clouds of shadow swarmed around the general's head, tearing and biting like locusts. Mariel laughed, and kept the clouds active around both the general and the drakonid, who collapsed, writhing in pain on the ground. The clouds ate away at their flesh and left nothing but bone. Mariel dropped the clouds, and took in several deep breaths. We regrouped, gathering around the skeleton of the Infinite general.

Ellemayne was the first to talk. "Mariel, what in the name of Elune did you do?"

"Oh, just a little spell I like to call 'Atrocity'. Why?" He gave a smile that screamed 'I'm innocent'.

Ellemayne tapped her bow. "And what exactly does it do?"

"Well, it corrupts anyone I want it to nearby, eating away at them."

The huntress nodded. "So essentially it's the same as that corrupting spell you use, but it strikes multiple foes at once?"

"Yup!" The warlock beamed, fixing his robes.

"I don't want to interrupt your conversation, but we have a problem!" We spun around towards Katalyn.

She was leaning over Droga, who lay on his back. There was something wrong with him. I couldn't put my claw on it, but there was _something_ off.

Amanthe gasped. "His arm!" She ran over to him. "Katalyn, do you have something that heals?"

Katalyn shook her head. "No, I only have poison and venom."

Amanthe cursed for a minute. She said some things I can't repeat. "Alright. I can try to heal it. Droga, hold still."

He huffed. "It's nothing."

"Your arm is broken and bent in the opposite direction, now hold still!" Amanthe moved a hand over Droga's arm, and pulled off the armor as she went. She laid a hand against his skin, and closed her eyes. A light started to glow in her hands, and infused the orc's arm. Amanthe's eyebrows furrowed together, and the light intensified. She took her hand off, breathing deeply.

"It's no use. That axe had some enchantment on it. I can't heal your arm magically. You'll just need to mend."

Ellemayne stepped forward. "Step aside, Amanthe. This is my area of expertise."

"I'm fine."

"No, you are not. A broken bone is often sharp, and moving around can cause the sharp edges to puncture blood vessels, resulting in internal bleeding. Your arm _has_ to be treated."

"Well, you're the one who's centuries old. Fine," Ellemayne put a hand on his arm, and twisted it into a position that looked more or less normal. Droga grunted, but otherwise held firm.

"We'll need to put that in a cast, your armor will be too hard on the arm while it heals. We'll also need to find a way to remove the enchantment, so that Amanthe can mend the bone."

Amanthe nodded. "We can go to the green flight. Well, Selriona and I can't, but you four can-"

Katalyn disagreed. "NO! Amanthe, have I not gone over this already?" Katalyn returned to her human form. "We cannot split up. You and Mariel can find a way to remove the magic, meanwhile Ellemayne can keep the injury from worsening, she's got enough survival training to do that. We'll circle around the world tree and continue down. Remember what Chromie said: failure is NOT an option" Everyone nodded, murmuring agreement. "Alright then. Let's move" Katalyn started leading us around the 'bowl' of the world tree, but Ellemayne quickly took the front.

"Not so fast, Katalyn, I'm the leader here, remember?"

"Like hells you are. I am of noble birth!"

"And I am over five hundred years old. I have far more experience in leading than you, ergo, I am leading," The two continued to bicker back and forth about who should be in front, while Fluffy walked in between them. Somehow this prevented them from escalating into violence. Droga and Mariel walked silently next to each other, though from the look on Mariel's face, he would have been talking, but it seemed Droga's presence shut him up. I settled in the back with Amanthe. She looked at me, but refused to look me in the eyes.

"You'd better go into a mortal form. Just in case the Guardians of Hyjal see us."

I nodded. "True," I took a deep breath, and changed to my human form. This made Amanthe's face redden horribly, and small tears to glisten in her eyes. Before I could ask her what was wrong, however, Droga looked back at us, smiling.

"You had better be in the middle. Don't want any Infinite assassins sneaking up behind you."

I nodded, and sped up my walking, while Droga and Mariel slowed down, so that the group ended up with Katalyn, Ellemayne and Fluffy in front, me and Amanthe in the middle, and Droga, Mariel and the felhound in the back. I looked back at Amanthe.

"Amanthe, please just tell me, what's going on with you?"

She jerked a little. "Nothing! There is _nothing_ going on with me! Selriona, just worry about yourself, alright?"

"Amanthe, you're my friend, and after all the times you worried about me, I'm repaying the favor. What is wrong?"

She sighed, and then looked at me, right into my eyes. "You'll find out in a few days" After that we were both silent, while I pondered what she could have meant. Slowly, we made our way around the edge of the mountain, when Ellemayne stopped. She picked a few vague herbs from around a tree, and took off her belongings. She rummaged around, and then pulled out a flask of water and a small vial. She put the herbs in the vial, and filled it with water, before sealing it off. She shook up the contents, before turning to Droga.

"We should stop for now, I can make a healing mixture for the bone, but I need a fire/"

Mariel stepped forward. "Allow me/"

He pulled a few twigs together, and placed rocks around them. "Stand back everyone!" Mariel held his hands out, fire crackling along them. A stream of red flame came out, snaking through the air, and smashed into a tree, setting it ablaze. "My bad!" He shot another river of fire, this one crashing into the grass, incinerating it. "Butterfingers! Alright, third time's the charm!" It wasn't 'the charm' for the squirrel. "This time, this time for sure!" The flames skipped across the stones surrounded the twigs, but managed to catch, creating a small fire. We all looked around at the small bushfire Mariel's stray flames had created, and all at once placed our heads in our palms. Mariel gave us a look of innocence. "What? It worked!"

Ellemayne walked up to Mariel, and hit him across the face with the bow. "YOU IDIOT! Do you WANT to attract the green flight? Furthermore, are you _trying_ to burn down the world tree?"

"It was an innocent mistake! Honest!"

"Tell that to the animals you just killed" The kaldorei turned away from Mariel with a huff, and knelt down next to the small fire, and placed the vial near the flames. She let the contents heat up, followed by her removing it and stirring it it. Fortunately, the bushfire seemed to be contained, and didn't move around. On closer examination, I saw that lines of dirt surrounded the area, places where the guardians had burned small lines in the earth so that the flames couldn't move across. After a few minutes of rearranging the contents of the vial, and everyone else placing soil onto the flames to try and snuff them out, Ellemayne stood up. "Got it. Droga, here drink this" He obeyed. "Alright, let's go before the guardians get here -"

"We're already here."

We all froze and turned around. There in front of us stood twenty armored night elves in battle stances , wielding circular glaives, rings with razor sharp edges. Their female leader wore her silver hair tied behind her back in the 'pony tail' past (Or should it be present?) Amanthe did. Her hands each held a glaive by her sides.

Mariel's eye twitched. "Aw shit."

Amanthe leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Get ready to use your true form. It'll make you harder to kill," I nodded.

Katalyn stepped forward. "Guardians, it was an honest mistake. _Mariel_ here has no idea how to aim his fire spell," At the word fire, about half of the guardians flinched, the leader included.

"And why, pray tell, was he using a fire spell? Furthermore, why are those two in cultist robes?", she said, pointing to me and Amanthe. Oh dear. Katalyn started to open her mouth, but the night elf would have none of it. "Do not bother, we all ready know. Attack!" All twenty night elves charged at once as I changed back to my true form.

Before they could take four steps, Mariel sent a red glob towards the leader, but right before it got there, it slowed to a stop, and hung in the air.

"Shit!', said Mariel. "There's an Infinite among them!"

This made a few of the elves stop for a moment in wonder, but others continued. Amanthe cursed and pulled something out from a pocket folded into her robes. It was a tablet made of rock the size of her hand, with draconic inscriptions on it. She began to read furiously from it, stuttering over the words. For a moment after she finished, I felt powerful waves of arcane energy wash over me. Half the night elves collapsed, their hands on their heads, groaning. The others stopped, looking at the ten or so Infinite dragonspawn where night elves had just been.

Droga growled. "They're everywhere"

My eyes widened in shock, before taking a deep breath, launching a fireball and quickly, while still in my mouth, exhaling, blanketing the opposing dragonspawn in deep azure flames, contrasting sharply to Mariel's largely extinguished forest fire. Unfortunately, I failed to take into account the ten or so night elves in the way, and a few of them got singed by the shadow energies, the others blocking the flames and inadvertently protecting the Infinite. I only managed to immolate two of the dragonkin.

"Selriona!" Amanthe yelled. "Fly up!"

"Got it!" I jumped up a short distance, hovering above the ground before I rose even higher. Mariel threw curses left and right, each one causing a kaldorei to collapse, panting in exhaustion. Droga, Ellemayne, Katalyn and Amanthe had all engaged several dragonspawn on their own. Droga fought with one arm, but with just his sword he was losing against the two dragonspawn. I spat a fireball at one of them, leaving Droga with just one, which he was more than a match for. Katalyn, in her worgen form, deflected strikes amazingly fast. Suddenly, she vanished.

She reappeared behind an Infinite dragonkin, and sliced her knives across its back with a rapid spin. Before it could turn around, she faded from sight. She jumped back and forth a few more times, slicing an enemy each time.

Ellemayne was apparently good in close quarters as well, her bow functioning as a sort of weapon. She held it on both ends, holding it parallel to the ground and thrust it straight up, blocking a shimmering dagger, before she turned it perpendicular and thrust it to the right to block another attack. She then moved both hands to the same end and whacked the dragonspawn on the head, moments before both Fluffy and the felhound descended on it.

Amanthe was in trouble. The remaining three dragonspawn had her surrounded, and she was only using two short daggers, the blades only as long as her hand. She had a shimmering barrier of light around her, which absorbed attacks from two of them, while she defended against the other with her blades, but it slowed her reflexes to keep the barrier shifting to catch the strikes. I spat another twilight fireball at the one she was defending against, immolating it, before blasting another, and falling down on the third, crushing it under me, but not before it got around Amanthe's shield and stabbed her in the right arm while her back was turned.

"Amanthe!" I shifted to my mortal form. "Are you alright?"

She grimaced. "Ah, yeah. I just need to heal it," She waved a glowing hand over the wound, but nothing happened. She did it again, and groaned. Katalyn walked over and took Amanthe's arm in her hands to examine the injury.

"That's pretty deep, but not dangerous, since it's narrow. There's a problem though. There's wound poison in it, she's not going to be able to heal it. Also, it's going to hurt like a bitch" As if to prove this statement, Amanthe shrieked a little before gaining control over her voice.

Amanthe bit her lip. "At this rate we'll never reach the shrine of Aessina, much less Sulfuron keep."

I looked at Katalyn. "Can't you make an anti-venom for it?"

The royal worgen shook her head. "Not with venom this potent. Let me tell you, whoever the Infinite have making their poisons," She let out a barely audible whistle. "They're something else, I'll tell you that."

I raised an eyebrow. "And you can tell all that just by looking at the wound."

"I can. Also by smelling it."

Amanthe grunted, and held her arm while she clenched her teeth. "I'll just have to tough it out. Come on, let's go before we have the entire green flight on us"

Mariel walked over, as did Droga and Ellemayne. I vaguely noticed Droga still held his broken arm. The blood elf nodded. "Alrighty, let's get going then. We have what, three days? It's noon now, so we'd better get marching!" Mariel took a single step when he collapsed face first, the felhound bursting in a burst of purple mist, fading back to the nether. A green handle ringed with blood protruded from the base of his head, severing the spine. We all stood there in stunned silence for a few moments.

Ellemayne jumped up and ran over to him. "Mariel!" She looked up at the source of the projectile. All the night elves were collapsed in exhaustion, but one of them had managed to push themselves up into a sitting position and throw the knife at Mariel. In an instant Ellemayne pulled her bow's string back, and a tip-less arrow materialized in place. She let it go, and the dull projectile hit the guardian in the head with so much force they passed right out.

Droga shook his head and knelt next to Mariel's body. "Poor kid. Well, we don't have time to mourn him. We need to go," Silent nods from everyone else, and we departed away from the blaze. I walked next to Amanthe.

"What were those tablets you read?"

"They were these magical things. I'd seen a Kingslayer use one of them to reveal a dragon hiding in human form, and I only recently got one. Looks like it came in handy, huh?"

I sighed. "They did. The surprise probably slowed down the night elves. Hey, how's your arm?" As if mentioning it caused the pain to spike, Amanthe winced.

"Fine. I'd better go over to Droga and find a way to fix his arm," Before I could talk Amanthe had sped away and was examining Droga's arm. I shook my head. What was _wrong_ with her?

Slowly, we made our way around, arriving at a ramp up, leading away from the world tree. The path up was slow and tiring, but as the sun descended under the horizon at times normal for winter, we made it up. Ellemayne shuddered.

"The Circle of Cinders. Oh the memories. So odd, seeing it from this perspective," Circles of ringed ash were scattered throughout, where fire elementals had probably once raged, but now only their husks remained, and plants had already begun to reclaim the soil. Druids were all around in the rings of ash, helping to nurture the resilient life forms that tried to live there. Some waved their hands over the plants, any green light hidden from the distance. Others walked back and forth, giving the others tiny acorns, seeds, and other ingredients for their rituals. Ellemayne took one look at the sun, or rather, the lack thereof.

"We can probably make it to the end of the Circle, but we'll need to stop there for the night. We can't move in this dark, not with the Infinite being as well suited to shadows as they are" The rest of the group murmured in agreement, all except Amanthe, who just nodded slightly. We slowly made our way through the ashes, being careful not to draw the attention of any druids, lest they find out who I was. We already had our hands full with the Infinite, we didn't need the green flight attacking us every corner we turned. Droga drifted back to me.

"If I am correct, you've met my ancestor Kolkna, yes?"

I winced. "I... have met her, yes."

Droga smiled. "What was she like?"

"Well, I don't think I'm the best person to ask. But if you want to know, I was her captive after I shot her flying mount, I think it was called a nether ray."

"Why did you do that?"

"She was going to kill me if I didn't. I was escaping from Stormwind when I first met her, and she was trying to kill me. Eventually she did catch me, and, well..."

"Well?", Droga urged me on. "What about her?"

"She was a BIT-," I pinched my fingers together to sarcastically show a small amount. "-of a sadist."

Droga huffed. "That sounds like what I've heard about her alright."

"So, what's the future like, where you're from."

Droga's mouth pulled into a thin line. "I... don't think we're allowed to tell you."

I groaned. "That's just great. Chromie said that Verthelion becomes important later, can't you just tell me why?"

Droga was silent for a while, before responding. "No, I am sorry. I can't tell you," I groaned, and kicked a rock in front of me. Said rock tumbled down the hillside we had since climbed up. Ellemayne stopped.

"We should set up camp here. Here's the watch: We each stay up for one hour, and then wake up the next person. Order is me, Amanthe, Droga, Selriona, and Katalyn. That way we should be safe against any sneak attacks," Ellemayne bent down, took off her pack, and fumbled through it with one hand, while the other scratched Fluffy's ears. "But first, we need to eat. Good thing I brought provisions" Ellemayne took out several rods, and stuck them together in vague triangle formations, three in all. She then took out a few flaps of a dull blue cloth, and placed several on each formation of rods, creating three tents. She placed rocks together in a ring and was about to start a fire in the dry wood she collected when I launched a small fireball into it, briefly igniting it in deep blue flames before becoming a standard bonfire.

Ellemayne pointed one finger at me. "Right. Twilight drake. Fire. Got it. Anyway, here's the provisions. They taste like shit, but they'll keep you hydrated and fed," She took out several other things from her pack, six of them. They were flat round things, colorless, about the size of my eye. I took one, and everyone else did. Ellemayne put one into her mouth. She grimaced, but forced herself to swallow. She knelt down next to Fluffy and offered the feline one. Fluffy whined. "I know boy, it tastes bad, but it's good for you," Hesitantly, Fluffy took it from her hand, gagged on the tablet several times, but swallowing it down. I shrugged and ate it.

And nearly spat it back out.

It tasted like snake! Only this time I wasn't starving, so I wasn't nearly as inclined to eat it. Slowly, I nibbled it down, keeping the taste minimized. Eventually, after a few minutes of fighting off my gag reflex, it was gone.

Ellemayne walked over to a tent. "Alright, good night everyone. Amanthe, I'll wake you up once it's your turn. Be careful, I'll be setting traps around camp."

Amanthe nodded. "Got it," I followed her into a tent, while Katalyn, still in worgen form, and Droga went into another, with Fluffy curled up in the last one, while Ellemayne stayed outside, walking around, placing things on the ground every now and then. I curled up on the ground while Amanthe laid on her back. She was deathly quiet, and if it weren't for the near-silent flow of air in and out of her lungs, I would have thought she was dead. _Something_ was wrong with her, but since she wouldn't tell me, what could I do? I had to simply leave it be. If she was in the future, and I survived, I would find out in my own time, and help her then. But, if I did help her, she wouldn't be like this now. So I probably failed to help her. But I was determined to help her in the future so... so...

My right eye twitched again; time travel really hurt my brain. I decided to sleep on it, after all, I couldn't defend myself from the Infinite sleep deprived. I closed my eyes, and I had fallen asleep in seconds.

I woke up to somebody shaking me awake. I was up in an instant, remembering that I was to watch the camp for the next hour. Droga's voice permeated the small area of the tent.

"Hey, drake. Wake up, I want to go back to sleep," I blinked the remnants of sleep out of my eyes and walked out. Droga returned to his tent, and fell asleep.

I looked at the campfire, still burning. I briefly considered putting it out to hide us from the Infinite, but decided against it. If the Infinite could travel through time and space like they so obviously could, they could comb the entire mountain in literally an instant to find us. They could appear any place, any time.

Any place. Any time. My heart started racing. What was keeping them from attacking right now? Why were they staying their hand? What kept them away? For that matter, why did only one version of each Infinite dragonkin attack at once? If they really could travel through time, why didn't all the past and future versions of each of their fighters attack me at once? What was keeping them from doing that? Pride? Underestimation? I shook my head. If they were underestimating me, they would not be attacking me in the first place. I brought myself back to a chain of thought I had very, very long ago. I was just a twilight drake, one of thousands. What was so unique about me? Then I came to the same answer: I was the only one who knew we had all been brainwashed. Titans, what did I_, _or rather, what did _Verthelion_ do later that was so important? But then why were they holding back? Or maybe... they weren't? Maybe time travel wasn't as easy as Chromie made it look? After all, if it was, then they would know who fails to kill me, and they would send someone who wouldn't. Or they see find someone who outlives me, and persuade them to be sent back and kill me. Like the Epoch Hunter. Jeziba had said he wasn't able to die, that he was destined to die in a place called Durnholde. Or like how Chromie had said that the mortals I was with wouldn't be able to kill Aeonus, and Mariel had hinted that he would die in a place called the Black Morass.

Mariel. He died. He died because of me, to protect me. He had been young, too. I felt frustrated. I hadn't known him for a day, and he gave his life for me. Not intentionally of course, but he still did. I shuddered, and settled for looking at the mountain. The circles of ashes in the night were illuminated by the still-glowing embers in them, making the land look like it was solid rock breaking apart, revealing magma underneath. It was amazing. I briefly considered taking to the air; it would look more amazing there, but I quickly pushed the idea out of my head. I was not splitting off. Who knew what tricks the Infinite had. Or if the green flight patrolled here.

I sighed, and relaxed my head. I was well rested; I needed about as much sleep as mortals did, being a drake, but I wouldn't feel the effects of little sleep for two hours, and by then, if all went well, I would be asleep again. I scoffed. Yeah, big if. I stared into the slowly shrinking camp fire, and got up. I gathered more twigs and branches, tossing them in. They steamed briefly as the water left in them burned off, but soon the flames warded off the shadows again, along with anything in them. Another thought occurred to me. Why couldn't I enter the twilight realm? I could bring the others with me, and the Infinite wouldn't be able to gain access. Perfect! I concentrated, trying to find the still un-emerged reserves of magic in my body. I had pulled them out when Deathwing attacked, but I had been fueled by adrenaline then. Now, in the dead of night, it was almost impossible to draw the smallest bits of magical energy up. Completely impossible, in fact.

I nearly smacked myself for being so stupid. Of COURSE I couldn't do it. I was in a mortal form. I let my illusion fall and continued to search within my body and mind for my latent stores of magical power. Slowly, I pulled it out, shaping it into a ball. I opened the portal and... it closed immediately. I was surprised, to say the least, but tried again. The mana stayed stubborn and almost impossible to manipulate, but I still managed to open the portal. Only for it to slam shut right away. Something was preventing me from opening a portal to the twilight realm. I growled. Of course, the Infinite wouldn't want me doing that. They wouldn't be able to find me then.

Something rustled in the trees, and I contracted to my mortal form. It was faint, just barely in my range of sound, but it was definitely there. I wasn't going to take chances. I fired a very small fireball into the trees, and it illuminated a face. A face was all I could gather before the light died. Oh. Shit. I ran into the other tents, shook everyone awake, and told them there was somebody who'd spotted us. Only Ellemayne didn't wake up. She seemed to be almost in a coma. Eventually I gave up and walked back out of her tent, looking at the others. Apparently they had found the person who had stumbled onto our camp, and Katalyn had her at knife point, probably after a short fight.

It was a female kaldorei, with leather armor that, with the dark of night sucking away color and the campfire behind her, looked dull orange. Her hair was almost the same, but I could still see a bit of blue on it through the orange highlight, and she been disarmed of her bow in her left hand, which lay on the ground two meters from her.

Katalyn growled at her. "Who are you? How did you get through the traps?" She tossed her hair, and remained silent. This only made Katalyn snarl. "Answer me, girl."

"The traps were difficult, but I got through them. As for who I am, all YOU need to know is that I'm one of the Kingslayers," Oh hells. The night elf stayed silent, probably waiting for a response of fear or worry. She didn't get one. Amanthe whispered into Droga's ear, and I could only just hear her.

"What are we going to do? Should we tell her?"

Droga shook his head. "No, we should just persuade her we're not against her," They turned to her, and Droga continued speaking. "How did you find our camp? Who do you think we are?"

"Hmmph. I saw a flash of dark blue fire, I came to investigate."

I blushed furiously. That was probably me.

Katalyn's voice became level, calm, and dead serious. "And how long ago was this?"

"About two hours ago," Two hours ago? Then it couldn't have been me. But then... who was it? "I know you're cultists. I can tell from the robes on her," She pointed towards Amanthe. "And her," The night elf pointed towards me. Ellemayne walked out of her tent. PERFECT TIMING.

She looked at the night elf. "What's going on here?"

I answered her. "I found her approaching us."

"Well why didn't you wake me up?"

"I tried. Believe me, I _tried._"

"Oh. Well, let me take a look at her" Ellemayne walked up to the girl, still restrained by Katalyn's knife, and gasped, staggering back. "Oh no. Oh no oh nononono."

Droga looked up. "What is it? What's the problem?"

Ellemayne gulped. "I know her name."

Katalyn looked towards her. "What is it?"

Ellemayne's eyes locked onto the night elf's. "Her name... her name is Ellemayne Glaivewing."

We all stood still in that silence, looking at Ellemayne, back to Ellemayne, and at Ellemayne again. Ellemayne, the one we'd captured that is, was the first to talk. Her voice was decidedly different from our Ellemayne's for some odd reason.

"How do you know my name?"

The future Ellemayne laughed nervously. "Well, funny story. You see-," But Ellemayne, um, the past one, had taken advantage of Katalyn's surprise to jump out of range, back a good twenty meters, and quick as a viper, had her bow up and an arrow notched, despite it having been taken from her. Now that it was up in the air, I could see the bow more clearly. The bow was mechanical, and looked almost steam-powered. She must have not known how skilled the others were, after all, how would she? And she likely thought highly of herself for being a Kingslayer, and then there had been me in my mortal form, that definitely wouldn't have helped me. Future-Ellemayne took out her own bow, pulling the string back, an arrow materializing in it's spot, aimed right at Past-Ellemayne, who gasped.

"Thori'dal. How did you- what did you do to Rom?"

"I didn't do anything. You see, my name-"

Amanthe interrupted her. "Wait, shouldn't you NOT tell her?"

"It's alright. I remember this, I tell her. You see, Ellemayne, my name is _also_ Ellemayne Glaivewing, and I too, am one of the Kingslayers," Past-Ellemayne's jaw dropped, along with her bow, which clattered to the ground.

"W-w-WHAT?" she stuttered. "How is that - oh. The Bronze sent you back, didn't they?"

Future-Ellemayne grinned, and put her bow down. "Indeed, they did. All of us, actually. So, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, just stay out of our way, and do not tell anyone."

Past Ellemayne shuffled a little, clearly preparing to jump away and escape, probably for reinforcements. "And how do you know you can trust me?"

Future-Ellemayne grinned. "Because I remember that you listen to me" Past Ellemayne crouched, to which Amanthe responded by drawing the thick shadows of the night into her hands, but Future-Ellemayne stopped her. "No need for that. She's not going to betray us."

Past Ellemayne looked back at her future self. "We'll see about that," Then she was gone. I turned to our Ellemayne.

"Are you sure we can trust her?"

She nodded. "Of course we can, Selriona. I remember vividly. My past self won't betray us to anyone."

"She sure looked like she was going to!"

"I decide against it in the end. Alright guys, let's go back to sleep. Selriona, keep watch for another half-hour, then wake up Katalyn" Katalyn groaned slightly, clearly not happy about the concept about being woken up again shortly, but kept her mouth shut. The others vanished into the tents, and fell asleep soon enough. I stayed in the same spot, keeping the campfire going. I wondered about the blue flames that had attracted past-Ellemayne. It wasn't me, but then... who was it? The only person awake two hours ago was Amanthe. How had she been able to do that? Only my flight and the cult could control the power of twilight fire, nobody else. Unless... unless at some point in the future Amanthe joined the cult and learned it. Why would she have done that? I would have had to ask her when she woke up. For the time, I settled for keeping watch for another half hour.

* * *

><p><strong>'Continues listening to Back to the Future theme music'<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.**


	23. Chapter 23:Close

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels, Blizzard Entertainment does**

**Once again, thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for betaing.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>We woke up as the sun peeked over the horizon. We shuffled out of our tents and extinguished the campfire with large quantities of dirt. Ellemayne gave out more of the horrible-tasting biscuits, which we all forced ourselves to swallow. By the time the sun rose above the tree peaks, we were wide awake and ready to leave. Katalyn, Fluffy, and Ellemayne took the front, while Droga and Amanthe took the rear, leaving me in the middle. Back at the camp, Amanthe had finally figured out how to get around the magic on Droga's broken arm heal it. We walked down the hills we had camped on in the Circle of Cinders, and travelled down the road without incident. Eventually, the path narrowed into a valley, and then a canyon. A few trees here and there stood out, but otherwise the land was barren of all life. Not even three meters across, it was a tight fit. I imagined hordes of demons surging up this canyon, felhounds climbing over each other, felguards shoving other demons out of their way, infernal meteors crashing down onto the narrow choke-point, the waves of fire from a wrathguard surging up like a tidal wave, compressed by the space.<p>

I didn't get an opportunity to ask Amanthe about how in the name of the titans she could control twilight fire, and from the looks of things, she wasn't in a talkative mood. Ellemayne held up a hand to stop. Something was up. I felt it too. The base of my spine began to tingle. The light in front of us was sucked into a point, before an Infinite portal opened. I looked behind us, only to be met with another portal. They were smart, I gave them that, for attacking us where space was narrow.

Of course, that presented a major problem for us.

Out of the portal in front of us, an enormous Infinite drakonid far taller than the other ones walked out, towering over us. In his hand he wielded a long axe, resting at the drakonid's sides, the handle as tall as the wielder himself, and the blade kept shifting. One instant it was a single-bladed wooden axe, another instant it was double-bladed, both edges an Omega symbol, like the kind I heard felguards used. The blade cycled between dozens of forms in a single second. The drakonid pointed his axe at me, and his empty hand made a gesture that closed the portal behind him.

"Selriona, hatched one-hundred and three days after the second Shattering. You will bring unimaginable sorrow to the denizens of Azeroth through your mate. You will not be allowed to escape Hyjal with Verthelion, our master commands it." He turned his attention to the others. "Do you not see? We are the righteous ones! The Bronze say that our interference will destroy the future, but that is only on an individual basis. Brought together, the changes that must occur to history will result in Azeroth's triumph! Stop this foolish quest, or all will be lost!"

Ellemayne shot an arrow at his forehead as her response. Before it could kill him, a transparent, sparkling barrier appeared and deflected the arrow, making the wood on it rot in an instant, years passing in a moment.

His face contorted into a snarl. "Very well. You have made your decision. Attack the twilight drake! Ignore the others, they are irrelevant to our master's plans!" From the portal behind me, I heard small shrieks. I looked behind, as did Amanthe and Droga. A dozen whelps emerged from the portal, scales black, their horns glowing silver. I wasted no time in taking to the air, unfurling into my natural form. I scrabbled for purchase along the canyon walls. Luckily, I found several nooks and cracks that I dug my claws into, which allowed me to stay on the wall. I didn't look at how the others were fairing with the drakonid. I looked at the dozen whelps flying towards me. Fire boiled in my crop, and I took a deep breath.

A voice in my mind scolded me, _What are you doing? Those are _whelps!_ Are you seriously going to _kill_ whelps?_

I shook the voice off. They were going to kill me. I couldn't just let them. I breathed out. A stream of twilight fire flew through the air and crashed into nothing, as the whelps dashed to the side or allowed gravity to tug them to safety. I turned my head to the whelps, the stream of firing following my actions, but they were quick to avoid the flame. One of them opened their tiny mouth and spat a blast at me, a small bolt of arcane magic. It crashed into my neck, and burned me. It wasn't much, but the others followed that one's example, and more blasts pelted me, the pain forcing me to let go of the cliff and fall. I fell right onto the drakonid, or rather, another one of those square barriers, on top of its head. I quickly took back off, leading the whelps on a small chase. They had the advantage. I couldn't properly extend my wings in this canyon, but they could. I latched on to the cliff faces and used my momentum to dodge the blasts, before launching myself off again, but that was all I could do, and I had a feeling they knew this. The whelps were agile enough to dodge each of my blasts, and I only managed to catch one off guard, which still left it as me against eleven whelps.

Another one blasted me in the stomach. I screeched in pain, and narrowed my eyes. That did it. I took another breath, bringing more fire into my crop. However agile these whelps were they were still young. I fired the blast, followed by exhaling. The wide stream of flame caught all of them, and twilight fire engulfed them completely. I was about to set to blasting the drakonid when another blast of arcane energy sailed past me, coming dangerously close to my wing. I looked down at the single remaining portal, and groaned in despair. Another dozen whelps had emerged, and were already flying towards me. I fired another wide spew of flames, but they had learned how to avoid it. A tiny web of energy, woven from the combined efforts of the whelps, froze my flames in their tracks, which allowed them to maneuver around, where they launched more arcane bolts at me. I didn't have any room to maneuver, so most of them hit me in the side, the head, and back. I got closer to them in desperation, and swatted one to the side with a paw. The whelp smashed into the canyon walls and fell down, where I nailed it with a fireball.

That was when it all went wrong. Blasts of energy hit my wing-bone, right where my wings grew out of my back. My right wing went limp, and the surprise resulted in me crashing to the ground, the other whelps descending on me, biting me, blasting me, and burning me with those horrible silver cracks. I roared, stood up, and smashed myself to the sides of the canyon to try and get them off, but more just came out of the portal, biting and scratching my muscles so that I collapsed to the ground, unable to keep my - and their - weight up. I tried to shake them off, but to no avail.

"Selriona!" Amanthe cried out. Waves of blue flame washed over me, and I closed my eyes as the shadowy fire washed over me. It stung a little, but didn't do much to me, as I could resist its dark energies, and these twilight flames had very little heat in them. The whelps fell off me as Amanthe ran over to me and healed my injuries. She stumbled a little, the use of magic taking its toll. More whelps came out, but they weren't prepared to see a mortal wash twilight flames over then. I looked over at the others, still fighting the drakonid.

The drakonid struck at Droga with his axe. He brought it up by his left shoulder and swung down. The axe collided with Droga's shield, and continued down, ending at the drakonid's right knee. Shields surrounded the drakonid, shifting and reconfiguring themselves to negate incoming attacks. Katalyn, in her worgen form, had gotten behind the drakonid, but the shields held her attacks at bay. Ellemayne was on the canyon walls. She aimed each shot carefully between the cracks of the shields, but each time she did they re-aligned themselves in the blink of an eye and blocked the arrow.

She growled in frustration. "We can't hurt it! We need to try something else!"

Katalyn jumped back after one of the shield squares thrust itself out at her, nearly catching her in the chest. I flew around behind the drakonid, who spun around. I only barely managed to dodge his axe, but it still cut back. I flew to the top of the canyon, and looked down on the fight. Amanthe incinerated another group of whelps, but nearly passed out. The shields around the drakonid were still mainly around its front. I got an idea. I waited for him to be distracted, and Droga soon provided that distraction by almost fitting his weapon through the shields. I quickly dove down right behind the drakonid and launched a fireball at its skin. He roared, stumbled, and the shields spun around to block me, but the damage was already done, and the twilight flames ate at his back-scales. The shields spun around him blindingly fast, deflecting any attack. We all stepped back, even the whelps that were about to descend on a collapsed Amanthe fluttered away from the drakonid. The shields spun faster and faster, energy building up inside, the shields behaving like a shell, not only keeping us out, but the energy in.

Ellemayne realized what was going to happen. "TAKE COVER!" I quickly took off, grabbing Amanthe in my claws and flying over the edge of the canyon. Droga knelt, raising his shield in front of himself like a wall. Ellemayne jumped from one end of the canyon to another, slowly going up and over the edge. Katalyn ran behind a tree and she faded into the shadows, before emerging out of mine, safe. A flood of bronze light exploded inside the canyon, some invisible wall keeping it from leaving. It stayed for an instant, then faded. We all peered over the side. The drakonid was gone, as were all the whelps and portal. Droga was on his knees, shield still raised. I flew down to him, leaving Amanthe up there. Katalyn jumped down the canyon. She fell an impossible distance, came into a roll, and stood, perfectly fine. Ellemayne stayed up there to help Amanthe, she was ideal for that with her survival training. I shifted to my mortal form and walked over to Droga.

I nudged him with my hand. He didn't move. I slapped him across the face, and he didn't even blink. I looked at his chest. He wasn't breathing, either. But then why was he still upright? Katalyn kicked him the chest, grunting when her foot didn't do anything to him. What was wrong with Droga? One of the pine cones nearby that had been shaken off its tree by the blast hung in mid air, frozen in time.

"Katalyn?"

She looked up from Droga. "Yes, Selriona?"

"I think I know what's wrong with him. Come here, look at this." She walked over to me, and gazed at what I was looking at.

She grimaced. "Oh no. Do you think it's permanent?"

"I hope not. We've already lost Mariel, we can't afford to lose him too." Katalyn looked up at the canyon walls. Ellemayne was looking over from the top, waving at me from above.

Ellemayne threw a small rock down at me, missing me by a nose. "Hey! Can we get some help up here? I can't carry her down."

Amanthe's voice came from over the cliff. "Oh shut up Ellemayne, I'm up." Said huntress immediately fell down, a levitate spell slowing her descent as she flailed wildly, Amanthe right behind her. They both hit the ground smoothly. Amanthe walked up to me. Her skin was pale and she breathed raggedly, obviously worn out from all that magic. She met my eyes for a moment, before looking away. "I... guess you want an explanation for that, huh?"

I sighed. "Not now. We have more important things to worry about, like how Droga's been frozen in time."

Amanthe sighed, wiping her forehead with an arm. "Thank you. Okay, let's get Droga, Katalyn, Ellemayne and... where's Fluffy?"

Ellemayne perked up at this. "Fluffy? Where is he?" She looked around briefly before settling on the feline in question, on a tree branch, holding on for dear life. She pulled him down from the tree, frozen. "Oh no, oh my baby! Are you okay? No, you can't answer me. How are we going to fix this?"

Katalyn suddenly took an interest in her boots. "I don't know. Amanthe, can't you remove the spell?"

She shook her head. "No, I can't do time magic. Far too advanced. We could go ask one of the ancients-"

Katalyn jumped as if electrocuted. "ARE YOU CRAZY? They'll kill Selriona on sight, and if she dies, there'll be a paradox, and we _all_ die."

"Not if we can convince them she's not a twilight drake. She can change her clothing to something not-threatening and I can just stay out of the way."

Katalyn growled. "We are - not - splitting up. That is an order."

Amanthe's eyes narrowed. "And who, exactly, are you to order me around?"

"I am the second in line to the -"

"The Greymane throne? As if I care about the -"

"HEY!" Ellemayne interjected. "If you two are done, we need to get going! Amanthe's right, we need to go to the ancients, if not to revive Droga and," Her voice dropped briefly into a babying tone "_poor Fluffy_, we need assistance to travel down the mountain. We'll _never_ get there in time at this rate!" Amanthe and Katalyn were both stunned into silence. "We need to go to Aviana. She's our best bet for transportation. It's risky. If she declines us, we'll have lost valuable time, but if she helps us, we'll speed up tremendously. Anybody want to argue?" Nobody spoke. "Good. Now, I'll carry Fluffy. Selriona, you have some of your strength in that form, right?"

I nodded. "Right."

Ellemayne smiled. "Good. You get to carry Droga. Amanthe, put a permanent levitation enchantment on them both," Droga and Fluffy both started hovering above the ground. Ellemayne picked up Fluffy in her arms, carrying the petrified lion with her, while I hoisted Droga into my arms. He was hard as stone, probably from the effects of time freezing. At any rate, the levitation enchantment meant he weighed next to nothing, so carrying him was easy. Ellemayne and Katalyn led us through the canyon, Amanthe next to me. None of us said anything to each other. The canyon gave way to the Shrine of Lo'Gosh. I shuddered, hoping that we wouldn't go down. Luckily, we didn't. The road that led down to the Shrine split off, one going up through a narrow valley. Note narrow in this case is fifteen meters wide. From time to time I had to place Droga down and rest my arms from holding him up, as did Ellemayne with Fluffy, and progress was slow.

The valley itself was several kilometers long, and we were halfway up it when Ellemayne stopped, put Fluffy down, and held up a hand for us to stop.

She took off her belongings and rummaged through them, pulling out more of the food biscuits. "Here, lunch," She proceeded to toss one to each of us, which we hesitantly ate. I shuddered in revulsion before I picked up Droga again. But Ellemayne stayed quiet. "Gather on me, now" We all did so, me in the center.

I whispered to Ellemayne. "What is it?"

She hissed back. "Lots of weak bad guys, or something really big. Cultists I bet. Be on your guard."

Amanthe's eyes widened. "Cultists? How would they get here?"

A twilight dragon soared over the valley, and landed in front of us. He was a shade of blue like Theralion had been, and his wings spanned the entire area of the valley.

I smacked my head. "Did you REALLY have to tempt fate, Amanthe? Let me handle this," I stepped out from the others and assumed my true form, briefly bowing my head to my front legs before the twilight dragon.

The dragon smiled like its food had become interesting, and spoke to me in Draconic. "Little twilight drake, care to explain what is going on here?"

I responded in the same tongue. "I don't exactly know where to begin. Perhaps names are in order?"

He nodded. "Very well. My name is Asphyxion. Yours?"

"My name's Selriona. If it's not to much trouble, could you please allow us to pass?"

Asphyxion raised his head, making him seem taller than he was. "Now why would I do that? I recognize the elf. She was the one who _killed my brother_, Vaporelion." My tail twitched a little at his mention of Ellemayne killing me kin, but I reminded myself how many night elves I had killed while I still thought Deathwing's side was righteous. I had no justification to be angry at her. Asphyxion looked my way. "Surely, you do not side with those _mortals_ over your own kin?"

I shook my head rapidly. "No, no it's nothing like that. See it's, oh titans, it's complicated. Would it mean anything to you if I told you it involved the Bronze Flight?"

Asphyxion lowered his head, looking at me from up close, exhaling through his nostrils. "Explain."

"Well, you see, I'm, well, we're _all_, from the future. We're supposed to go down the mountain and reach Sulfuron keep in... two days, I think it is, and we're here to try our luck with getting Aviana to send us down."

Asphyxion pulled his head back up. "And why, tell me, must you reach Sulfuron Keep? Which side will you aid on behalf of the wretched Bronze Flight?"

"Well, neither, it's sort of involving a third party?"

"Is that a question, or is that an answer?"

"It's an answer! So, can we go?"

Asphyxion growled, and spoke in Common, clearly hesitating about his answer. "You may pass. Except for the elf. I will take my vengeance on her," Ellemayne had Thori'dal out.

I got in between them, and also switched to Common. "She's a Kingslayer, do you REALLY want to fight one of them?" Asphyxion snarled at me, before opening his mouth to take in a breath. In an instant Ellemayne fired an arrow into his throat, but her aim was slightly off, and instead it hit the walls of the mature dragon's mouth. Asphyxion reared back and roared.

Ellemayne yelled. "Now! RUN!" We all ran around Asphyxion, me flying above him and Katalyn holding Droga and Fluffy. He recovered from the pain of having an arrow imbedded in his maw and looked at Ellemayne, launching a massive fireball at her. She jumped out of the way, up the valley. The attack crashed into the grass growing on the ground, incinerating it. Asphyxion smashed his wings to the ground. He caught all the others with his webbing and the force pushed them to the ground, where they quickly got back up and began running. Ellemayne fired more and more arrows back at him, but each one was intercepted by a shell of shadow magic. The edge of the valley was still far ahead, and no way they would be able to avoid Asphyxion's wrath until then. Said dragon took a deep breath, and I knew what he was going to do before he did it. He was going to unleash a wide stream of flame, but in the relatively constricted area of the valley, it would fill the area with shadow fire.

Amanthe grabbed Katalyn by the wrist and pulled her over to Ellemayne, and crouched. A hemispherical barrier of holy light surrounded all of them. The flames exploded from Asphyxion's maw, and crashed into the walls. They surged back around, and washed over the shield Amanthe had erected. I couldn't see very well among the fire, but it looked like the barrier was holding. Asphyxion growled in frustration and briefly took to the air, and landed his full weight on the shield that my companions had been under a moment earlier.

"Simply give me the elf, and I will let you all go. Even I understand the importance of when the Bronze transport you through time, paradoxes and whatnot. Just give me the kaldorei," Ellemayne dodged another fireball. I gritted my fangs together. I couldn't fight Asphyxion, he was my own kind. But I couldn't let Ellemayne die either. And yet, I couldn't intercept a fireball, that might kill me, and if what Chromie said was right, that would kill everybody. However, I could...

I swooped down at Ellemayne, outpacing Asphyxion's walking. I grabbed her and hoisted her up, still clinging on to Fluffy and Droga's frozen forms. Asphyxion tried to fly up, but he was restricted by the space of the narrowing valley. I went down again, grabbing Amanthe and Katalyn, flying on. Asphyxion fired a blasts at me, but I dodged every one of them. The valley narrowed into a canyon, barely large enough for Asphyxion to get through. We were almost there.

That's when he used his magic.

My wings seized up, and I plummeted to the ground. Dark chains spun around my wings, pinning them to my body.

Asphyxion came charging up the canyon. "Nobody will take my revenge away from me! NOBODY!" The others came out of my clutches, and began running down the still-narrowing canyon. I contracted to my mortal form and started after them, pumping my legs as fast as I could. Asphyxion was unable to follow us, and it would take a lot of time for him to circle back around. He instead fired another stream of fire after us, but Amanthe held it back with a barrier, barely. The best she could do was slow it down. We all burst out of the canyon and took to the sides of the exit as a torrential river of violet flames screamed past us, followed by a roar of defeat from further back. We all panted, getting our breaths back. I looked out at where we'd arrived, which, according to Ellemayne, was the Shrine of Aviana.

Trees dotted the landscape, and there was a colossal tree in the middle, the branches reaching up impossibly tall, though not as high as Nordrassil. A kaldorei building slept at the bottom, not overgrown by the tree, nor a portion of it dug out where the building was constructed, but rather part of the bark itself. The air whistled around the trees, creating a harmonious melody that permeated every square centimeter of the region. Falcons, eagles and hawks stood on the top of each tree, seemingly keeping watch, while smaller birds flew circles inside the branches. I could feel the air rising around me in vast thermals, and I knew that in my true form, flight would be near effortless. Dew glinted on the glass, refracting the noon light into the colors of the rainbow, making the grass appear multicolored.

Ellemayne recovered from her shock and scooped up Droga and Fluffy. "Are you CRAZY, Selriona?"

My eyebrows shot up. "What? What do you mean?"

Ellemayne scowled. "Flying _this_ close to Aviana's shrine! Didn't you think there was a reason that dragon didn't fly? It could have killed him! It could have _killed _you."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

Ellemayne took a deep breath. "It's alright. You didn't know. I'm sorry, I'm just a little shaken up about Fluffy. Come on, let's go to Aviana. We can ask her to unfreeze these two, and ask for transportation down the mountain."

"What about me? If she's an Ancient, won't she find out I'm a drake?"

Amanthe nodded. "Probably. I should stay behind too. You two go on ahead. I don't think the Infinite will try to attack us again so soon. There seems to be a period of time between each of their attacks."

Katalyn looked like she wanted to protest, but Ellemayne cut her off. "She's right, and they especially won't try to attack with an Ancient here. Come on Katalyn. You take Droga" She handed the worgen the orc statue, and the two departed for the tree.

I looked over at Amanthe. "Alright, explain. When and how did you learn to control twilight flame?"

She sighed, looking at my mouth. Not my eyes. "Alright, so, I was in the cult for a few years after my hundredth birthday. So?"

"The cult is evil, Amanthe."

"Need I remind you of your first three years?" I flinched as if struck. That was a low blow, and Amanthe could see that. She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I've just been a little off since I came here."

"Why is that? Amanthe, what is wrong? You're my friend, you can tell me. If there's anything I can do to help you..."

She shook her head, lowering her eyes to the ground. "There isn't anything you can do."

"Why not? What is it that's wrong, just tell me that."

She shivered, despite the warmth of the area. "I, I can't tell you. But believe me, you'll find out at the latest tomorrow."

I smiled lightly, trying to lighten the mood. "That isn't ominous, not in the least."

Amanthe smiled a little, still not looking me in the eye. "Yeah, I guess. Selriona, just promise me something."

"Sure, what?"

"When you find out, when you find out what it is, don't be angry, alright?"

I hesitated. What could be so terrible that Amanthe wanted me to promise not to be angry when I found out? And the way she put a time limit on me finding out, it sounded like she knew when the world was going to end to the second. Of course, that couldn't be it, she lived another three centuries, but then what was it? "I promise," A brief, uneasy pause stretched between us like a fjord. "Well, what else are we going to do while we wait for the others to get back?"

Amanthe shrugged. "I don't know, wait here, I guess. There's a chance Aviana will kill us, but if we leave, she won't be able to keep an eye on any Infinite that attack us. So, just wait here. That's all we can do."

We waited there a little while. Half an hour maybe. I broke the silence. "Thanks for saving me back there, from the whelps."

Amanthe smiled a little. "What are friends for? You'd have done the same for me."

I nodded. "Indeed, I would have" We fell into another lapse of silence. I could feel the tension radiating from Amanthe in waves. She was worried about something, but also seemed to have accepted whatever it was. Eventually, the others came back. Fluffy was at Ellemayne's side, and Droga was in between her and Katalyn.

Amanthe smiled. "Good to see you back in the present, Droga."

Droga chuckled. "Some drakonid can't keep me down. What happened to him anyway?"

Katalyn scowled. "He either committed suicide with that spell, or vanished. I hope it's the former. Wouldn't want to meet him again, he's too strong for us."

Amanthe nodded. "Alright, so we've got Droga and, um, Fluffy unfrozen. Did you find a way to speed up our trip?"

Ellemayne nodded. "As it so happens, great Aviana did give us a way," She produced six feathers, holding them by the wispy ends. They were brown, maybe a meter long, with white on their edges and a jet of black running through the middle. "Hold these by the harder portion and they will transport us down the mountain a large distance. Do not let go, you will fall. That may not be a problem for you, Selriona, but you'll be left behind,"

I nodded. "Understood."

Katalyn took a feather, being careful not to activate it. "Let us be on our way then. We are running out of time," She turned it around in her hand, and shot away into the distance. Ellemayne took a paste from her pack and applied it to a feather, before sticking it on Fluffy, who shot away with a terrified 'me-ow!'. Droga sheathed his weapons, took a feather, and vanished in an instant. Ellemayne and Amanthe did the same, leaving only one feather for me. I sighed, and took hold of it the way Ellemayne had directed.

Instantly winds gusted around me,. They lifted me off my feet and before I knew it, I was a kilometer above the ground. The sudden change in pressure popped my ears, and then I began to lower. The air was surrounding me like a small tornado, something I had experienced before. Trees and rocks and fires tumbled in and out of my field of view as the wild winds swirled me through the air, deflecting any onrushing gas. I couldn't see the others, they were too far away. After about a minute of going somewhere, somewhere, nowhere for all I knew, the vortex leveled out and began a stable descent. Trees skimmed past my feet, mere centimeters from touching me. I flew down, the miniature tornado of air keeping me aloft and stable. I flew over a lake, and past more trees, a path down the mountain whisked away from me before I could see any detail. The vortex slowed down and lowered me to the ground, the feather dissipating into the air, causing the winds to fade and depositing me next to Amanthe, Ellemayne, Droga, Katalyn, and twenty or so guardians of Hyjal surrounding us.

Damn it.

Droga scowled. "A trap! It was a trap, the Ancient didn't trust us!"

I groaned in despair when the guardians charged, switching to my true form.

I hovered over the guardians, just out of attack range. I flew over to each one, and hit them in the head with my tail-club to knock them out. Amanthe kept a barrier of holy light around her, deflecting each attack that came her way with her two small daggers. However, she didn't have to do this many times, since most of them seemed to be ignoring her. Looking closely, I could see why; She was transparent, almost invisible. Droga was proving his incredible skill. No matter how many glaives attacked him, he always managed to deflect or block the strike. Ellemayne jumped on top of one and flew backwards an impossible distance, and took aim. For the first time I saw how skilled Katalyn was first hand. She danced in between strikes, not even bothering to parry them. She kept moving in between the attacks, throwing vials whose contents I do not wish to know, striking with her two blades blindingly fast, looking almost as if she were dancing. Indeed, she was smiling as she did.

In no time at all, all the guardians were unconscious or dead, all but one. This one had black hair and golden eyes, with no tattoos on her face. I landed, and she looked right into my eyes and spoke. Her high pitched and childlike voice chilled me to my core. "It won't be enough."

I knocked her out with a paw.

We regrouped where we had been placed, in the middle of a forest which still bore the faintest traces of smoke in the air. Katalyn put her daggers away and changed to her human form, picking some dirt out of her hair. "Well, that was fun."

Droga glared at her. "_FUN? _You call unintentionally aiding Ragnaros _fun?_"

Katalyn shrugged. "I meant the fight itself. Selriona, are you alright?"

I nodded meekly, but in all honesty, my mind was elsewhere. _It won't be enough_. Did she know? How could she know? Or was she simply referring to Ragnaros' army? I didn't know, and it scared me. If she did know what I was here for, and said that 'It won't be enough', that didn't hold a good outlook on my future. "That elf said 'It won't be enough'. What could that mean?"

Ellemayne looked back. "Which one?"

I pointed to where the elf had been, but she wasn't there. "She's gone. I don't understand, I knocked her out. We'd better go, she's probably going to get help for the ones we knocked out"

Ellemayne looked at the sun for a moment, already starting its descent towards the horizon, and at the surrounding area. She nodded. "Alright. We're getting close. All we have to do is climb up those hills," She pointed south, at a place where the sky was orange and the trees were sparser the higher up the small elevation went. "and Sulfuron Keep will be on the other side. Let's get going, we'll rest on the hills tonight." Ellemayne started south, and we could do nothing but follow her up. The hills were steep, and the heat of the Firelands already made itself known, so progress was slow. The fact that there was the occasional cultist didn't help, but each one was dispatched with a quick shield to the face. As the sun began to hide below the horizon and Azeroth's shadow began its slow and ominous rise across the sky, my companions were all drenched in sweat, and even I was starting to get tired.

Finally, Ellemayne collapsed on a stone in the clearing. "Here, is where we'll camp. One second, let me get the food pellets out." Everyone else flopped down. Amanthe sat down next to a tree, Katalyn curled up on the ground, Droga took his armor off, put it to the side, and laid down on a rock. Fluffy stretched his paws out, giving a very wide yawn that showed off his primary fangs, before sleeping on the dirt. Our huntress leader gave us each the pellets, which we were too tired to complain about. Well, they were. I didn't manage to not wrinkle my face. Ellemayne took one look at the others, already asleep, and laughed a little. "Selriona, help me set up the tents. We can't risk exposure to the elements, especially with the fire one so close to us," She pointed her thumb back at the orange light tinging the sky behind us. "You up for first watch? Everyone else is beat."

I nodded. "Sure. Let's get these tents up." I swatted away a mosquito. I helped Ellemayne put the tents up and move everyone inside. I gathered a few rocks, put them in a ring with dry wood inside (Not to hard to find so close to Sulfuron Keep), and launched a small fireball inside.

"Night," Ellemayne said as she disappeared into her tent. I looked up at one of Azeroth's moons, the White Lady. It was high in the sky, unlike Azeroth's other moon, the Blue Child, which was barely visible from the tree branches in the way. They were lining up. In a few weeks time, there would be an extraordinary event, The Embrace. I continued to look up at the White Lady, and was soon lost in a sea of thoughts, all of which led nowhere while at the same time curling back on themselves, crashing into each other, combining, going back in the opposite direction of nowhere, before splitting back into their primal pieces, which repeated the cycle of thoughts, by leading nowhere. In no time my internal clock told me my shift was over. I walked over to a tent and shook Katalyn up. She had me by my throat, pinned to the ground before I could blink, the small hairs of her human form darkening, before she realized who it was and let me go.

I staggered away from her. "It's your shift. Nice to see you too, by the way."

She shook her head. "Sorry, I was having dreams."

"You're eyes weren't moving," I pointed out. She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again.

Katalyn groaned. "Just go to sleep, I'll take watch," I nodded, and walked over to the only tent with one person in it. I curled up on the ground, and fell asleep.

I woke up to Amanthe shaking me awake. I was up in an instant. "What what what?"

"We're under attack, come on!"

I followed her out of the tent. The night sky was lightening up; dawn was coming. Two dozen creatures surrounded our camp. They looked like kobolds only in the hunch of their backs, but they were made of congolomerations of metal, bone, flesh and stone, with curved scythe blades for hands. They tore through the trees without second thought, the blades going right through the trunks like they weren't even there. There were more further on, I could see, waiting. The others were already in battle, but they were fighting faster than I'd ever seen them fight. Amanthe had forsaken her barrier of light to aid her reflexes, and was blocking the strikes of those deadly scythe blades by mere centimeters. How their weapons could hold up to the creatures when they sheared through tree trunks like that, I didn't know. I brought fires into my hands and let a wave wash over the nearest five. They exploded into sand, and blew away into the wind. Droga slashed another through the 'waist' and it did the same thing. More kept coming to replace those lost.

We kept fighting on and on, but slowly we had to back up. I was cut in several places; my forehead, my left arm, the side of my gut. I released my true form and took to the few trees still standing, raining down fire. When the trees were cut down, I simply hovered out of range. Amanthe, Droga, Ellemayne, and Katalyn were all fighting a hopeless battle, and Fluffy was nowhere to be seen. There had to be hundreds of the things.

_It won't be enough._

No, I wouldn't let it end this way! I let out a wide stream of flames, incinerating twenty or so of the golems, but more simply took their place, appearing out of the shadows of others. However easily they died individually, there were a seemingly infinite number of them. We backed up nearly to the peek of the hills, the light of Sulfuron keep lighting up the sky in perpetual sunset(Or sunrise, however you want to look at it). I could hear the ragged breathing of the others, and I was out of fire. I couldn't fight them close up, those scythes would annihilate me. A shadow descended on the golems, and they stopped re-appearing. Oh good, still only three hundred left. A red projectile flew into one, imbedding itself in its chest. A moment later an arrow nailed the projectile's location.

An explosion tore the golem apart, throwing its limbs in all directions as a purple and black spherical wave of light and force, bright and dark at the same time, tore through the nearby constructs, turning them to sand. More projectiles flew out, each one followed by an arrow, and another shadow nova. Another golem detonated, but this time not only were the dozen next to it annihlated, several more were consumed by a black cloud and dissolved. In moments, there were no golems left. I set down on the ground, next to the others, who were covered in gashes, some deep, some light, none fatal as far as I could tell.

Droga was gasping. "What the hells were those things? Constructs made by the Infinite?"

Katalyn kept a hand on her lungs, trying to control her breathing. "I'm more interested in who saved us," We looked behind us at the peek of the mountain, where there were two men. One was the same dwarf from so, so long ago, the one who'd trapped me in ice and tried to exhaust me. He wielded the same bow as Ellemayne, called Thori'dal if what her past self said was true. Next to him was... was...

The elf jumped down, his green eyes glinting wickedly in the light. "Hello there!"

Amanthe stuttered. "How did you, you were -"

"BEHOLD!" He spread his arms out to the sides, grinning ear to ear like the lunatic he was. "Hyjal's summit was merely a setback!"

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	24. Chapter 24:Successful

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Thank you yet again to Dusty the Umbravita for betaing this.**

* * *

><p>We were all stunned. Mariel smiled, and looked like he might have started dancing any second. The dwarf, still up top with his bow on his back, looked down at us. His eyes strayed over all of us, and fixed on me. I returned his gaze.<p>

Mariel was absolutely_ beaming_.

We all asked the same question at once. "How are you alive?"

Mariel laughed, and took something out from his robes. It was a smooth violet sphere made of glass, with dark smoke swirling inside of it. It fit into the palm of Mariel's hand, and resonated with power. "Come on, you honestly don't think I keep my soul _inside_ my body, do you? Ha!" He put the orb back in his robes and stretched his arms. He groaned until his arms let out a small crack, then relaxed them.

Droga stammered. "H-how did you catch up with us? Aviana herself sent us down the mountain with tornadoes." Mariel shrugged, and put his hands together. The stone under him shifted, lifting him into the air. Flames sparked along the rock as it twisted in form and substance, becoming a demonic horse, with spikes coming out of nearly all places on its body and flames licking its hooves and mane. Droga nodded. "Ah, so that's how."

However impossible it should have been, Mariel's smile grew even bigger. "Yup! The thing doesn't need sleep, food, anything really, and it never, ever gets tired. I took a nap while it rode down here. Jumped down a cliff, I died again, but hey." His smile became a smirk. "That's what my soulstone's for." He flicked his hand dismissively, and the horse disintegrated back into the earth. "Pretty neat, huh?"

Ellemayne walked up to him. They looked at each other for a few seconds, before she slapped him across the face with one hand, then the other. "Why in the name of Elune didn't you come to us the moment you revived? And how many times _have_ you died?"

Mariel held up his hands. "Hey, I tried, I tried! But I couldn't see your tracks. As for how many times I've died..." Mariel counted on his fingers for a moment. "About thirty seven, give or take. But thirty of those were bets, so I wouldn't count them -" Ellemayne slapped him again.

"How could you not see our tracks?"

He shrugged and held his hands up again. "So I never learned to track, sue me."

Ellemayne's face went from her normal shade of violet to a darker, red-violet.

She slapped him again. "And why did you bring Rom here?"

Mariel looked back at 'Rom', and waved. Rom returned the wave. "Well you see," said Mariel. "I sort of ran into him on the way down. Um, literally. Sorry about that Rom."

Rom flicked a hand. "Eh, no problem!"

"Anyway, he asked who I was, if I was in any guild, I told him, one thing led to another, and presto! He's helping!"

Rom nodded. "Aye, I am. Mariel here explained tha whole situation to me!" His eyes caught sight of Ellemayne's bow. " 'ey, Ellemayne, what are you doing with Thori'dal? I thought I have it!"

Ellemayne rubbed the back of her head nervously. "Well, you see, you sort of give it to me in the future."

Rom's eyes widened. "Why would I do that?"

Ellemayne snapped at him. "You'll see! So, now what? I'm guessing we aren't going to just, you know, run into Sulfuron Keep's vicinity, find Aeonus and beat him up, are we?"

Droga shook his head. "No, don't you remember? We need to plant the beacon to summon Chromie. Only problem is, she told us to plant it near the keep, and you can bet that Ragnaros won't be too happy about that"

Amanthe exhaled through her nose. "No, he won't. But we don't have a choice, unless you feel like taking on Chromie's future self _and_ Aeonus..."

Katalyn nodded. "Yes, we don't have a choice. We'll also need to find Aeonus' time pocket. Rom, do you know how?"

The dwarf shook his head. "Not a clue. Ellemayne here was the only one of us who ever so much as _went_ ta Andorhal. She's the only one who knows what ta look for." Rom turned his head to Ellemayne. "What exactly _do_ we have ta look for? It would be better if more than one o' us knew." He jumped down next to us.

Ellemayne looked down at Rom, which is quite hard to not do when he's a dwarf. "There'll be a location lacking the environment of the area. When I approached Chromie's time pocket, the miasma of the plaguelands faded away. When we get close to Aeonus' location, the heat should diminish."

Katalyn frowned. "If we find it. Selriona, at what time of day did you attempt to save Verthelion?"

My heart clenched at 'attempt'. "Around the middle of the day."

Katalyn snarled. "Then we don't have the time to simply comb through the area. We need an idea as to where Aeonus will be." Mariel raised his hand, and the rogue sighed. "Yes, Mariel?"

He put his hand down. "Well, I was just thinking. Chromie's a bronze dragon, right? If we call her, wouldn't she be able to help us find the time pocket?"

Everyone looked at him in stunned silence. Amanthe spoke first. "That's... actually pretty smart."

Mariel rolled his eyes. "Well of course it is!", he said indignantly. "Now - hey, you guys all right? You've got some pretty bad cuts." Amanthe looked at the group, and sighed. She put her palms together and closed her eyes. Light radiated from her hands, and after about a minute, she released it. A burst of healing energy washed over us, and sealed any injuries. Amanthe sighed, and sat on the ground as she took in deep gulps of air. Mariel clapped. "Well, anyway, let's get going! Sulfuron Keep awaits!" Mariel ran up the peak and stepped closer to the realm of the Firelord, and instantly staggered back. "Ah, heat wave, heat wave!" Somebody snickered. I don't know who it was. It might've been me. I retracted to my mortal form and walked up, and everyone else followed behind me. I looked over and a wall of heat smashed head-first into me.

I didn't notice it much the last time I was there, being in my true form, but in my mortal form the heat was simply unbearable. I felt the air as it shimmered around me, and within seconds my lips cracked and I wilted. I panted and returned to my true form. I looked at Sulfuron Keep again. The pools of lava from up here looked like an ocean of flame. The keep itself stretched high up, and thick red clouds of volcanic ash billowed out from its top. The light that radiated from it surged through the night, so that even though it was dawn, it was as bright as if it were noon. The light of the keep itself flared and a halo of red light formed on its bottom and rose up. As it went eternal flames covered the keep's metal plating. Once the halo had engulfed the entire keep, the fire on it was siphoned into the middle, creating a ring of concentrated flame. This ring then dropped, and when it hit the ground, it exploded outward in a fire nova that devoured everything within half a kilometer, before pulling back into the keep, which glowed like a bonfire for a minute afterward.

Amanthe walked up to see it, but almost instantly shied away from the furnace. "Light! How are we supposed to go down there, much less to the keep itself?"

Droga took his armor off, and placed it in a neat heap on the ground. "We walk down, and tough it out. No other choice. Unless..." Droga looked at me.

I shuffled my forelegs nervously. "What?"

"Unless Amanthe puts a levitation enchantment on all of us and you fly us over. The air will help cool us off, and we'll be exposed for far less time." Everyone was silent for a moment.

Ellemayne put a hand on her chin. "That does make the most sense. With the levitation enchantment, we'll all be much lighter."

I sighed. It wasn't that I didn't have confidence in Amanthe's abilities, but I still felt nervous. If the spell faded while I flew above a lava pool, I wouldn't be able to keep us all up. Still, there wasn't any other way to get them over to the Keep without being killed by the heat. We were already short on time. "Alright, let's get going then." Amanthe nodded and placed the enchantments on everyone. I noticed something was lacking. "Ellemayne, where's your pet?"

She chuckled. "It's complicated. It's sort of like the spell Mariel uses to banish things, but it's more involved. I'm keeping Fluffy out of the heat until it's time, then I'm going to remove the spell from him."

I nodded. "Alright, let's get going." Amanthe got onto the base of my neck. Her body was stiff as a board. Ellemayne sat behind her, with Katalyn on my back. I began to hover in the air. I didn't feel their weight. Perfect. I grabbed Mariel in my front claws and Droga, who held on to his armor, in my back claws, with Rom holding on to my tail. To say it was uncomfortable would be an understatement. I moved forward, over the searing inferno. I flew as fast as I could, so as to give the others a breeze, even if it was a minor one, to combat the temperatures. About halfway there, I decided to tell Rom something, partly to break the silence hanging over us as heavily as the ash clouds.

"I've met you before, Rom."

I felt something suddenly move on my tail. "Wat? Where would ya met me before?"

"In the highlands. You trapped me in an ice prison after I killed a gryphon."

"That was YOU? Why, if ya weren't vital to preserving history, I'd - I'd, gah! Why did ya kill the gryphon anyway? He was my mount!"

"I didn't know. I was just hunting, to be honest. It wasn't anything personal."

"Why did are ye telling me this in the first place?"

I chuckled. "I just thought you should know, if you're going to be clinging to my tail."

"JUST THOUGHT YA SHOULD KNOW? I HAD TO _WALK _ALL THE WAY BACK TA VICTOR'S POINT!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know it was your gryphon at the time."

Rom growled at little. "I suppose it's better to know." The rest of the flight over to the keep went silently and, thank the Titans, without incident. I must've been quite a sight, three mortals on my back, two in my claws and one on my tail! I set down maybe five meters from Sulfuron Keep, after I let go of Mariel and Droga. The others got off my back, and I stretched out. That was incredibly uncomfortable, even with Amanthe reducing their weight.

Droga took out the beacon and placed it on the ground. He turned around, seemingly making a protective circle around it. Only, it's hard to create a protective circle with just one person, so the others took to surrounding it, in case anyone tried to destroy it.

After three minutes that were probably scalding to them, Katalyn spoke. "Alright," She wheezed. "Something's wrong with the beacon." We all turned around to look at the beacon. It hummed lightly, a thin beam of light shining from its core into the sky.

Ellemayne stared at it intensely, as if she were trying to pull Chromie out of the beacon through force of will. "Maybe it's not in the right spot?" She reached down and touched it, moving it to the left a couple meters. The light diminished, as did the humming. She moved it farther the other way, and the glow intensified, the humming transforming to vibration. She nodded, satisfied. "Alright. So we need to put it in a specific spot, and the closer we get the brighter the light and more intense the vibration" She began to walk around with the beacon in her hands as the light steadily increased in brightness.

Rom gasped for air, putting his hands to his knees. "Hold up! I have an idea to cool down." We obeyed, and Rom took out something from... where exactly? It was a trap, similar to the one he used on me. He placed it on the ground gingerly, and opened it up. A blue crystal was suspended in the middle, and Rom stepped on it, crushing it underfoot. The trap sprung, and sheet of ice spilled from it, coated the basalt around it in a sheet of magical frost that Rom was rolling around in, and stopped. In seconds, everyone were on it, taking in the coolness while it lasted. Soon enough, however, the heat from the area melted the ice. It still took much longer than it should have, thanks to whatever magic the trap had. Rom got up, and motioned to Ellemayne. "Alrighty, let's keep moving."

Ellemayne nodded. "Indeed, time is of the essence." We continued on.

She followed the beacon's 'path' right to a lava pool. By then the beam of light cut straight up into the heavens, and it vibrated so fast I could hear it from five meters away. "It has to be here. I can feel it." Ellemayne tossed the beacon into the molten rock, and we all watched as it submerged below the lava, unchanged. For a moment the beam vanished, but then it exploded out in a torrent of bronze light. We all flew back as a shockwave smashed into us, and the light continued to pour up. The air was sucked up with it, as was the lava, revealing the beacon. It was impossible to see the beacon itself though, sheathed in glowing light as it was. After maybe ten seconds the light vanished, before the beacon began to glow again, this time radiating light from the nine triangles on it. The light twisted around like a thread, forming an apex some fifty meters off the ground. The apex began to radiate light that took a shape, the shape of a wyrm. Light exploded from the central hemisphere on the beacon, red and black and bronze and all sorts of other bodily colors, and flowed into the light-wyrm, giving it substance before the light gave out, taking the beacon with it.

Chronormu landed in front of us. "Oh good, you got here, and..." She raised her snout to the air for a moment. "With five hours to spare? My my, cutting it rather close, are we?" She spoke as if we had been taking our time, deliberately. Droga looked about ready to explode at the 'accusation', but Chronormu laughed. "Oh relax, I'm teasing you. It must've been hard to get here. Anyway, let's get to business."

Chronormu shifted to her gnomish form and hopped out of the crater where lava had once been. Speaking of which...

Chromie held up her hand, the giant glob of molten rock freezing in mid air, an instant from hitting the surface and splashing all over us. "Whew! That could have been a disaster, couldn't it? Well, let's get out of here. It will still splash when I release it, and I plan on being far away when that happens." She looked at the parched mortals around her. "Oh, that's right. You don't have the air-slowing around you. Just, give me a second..." Chromie fiddled her hands in the air, probably sorting through magical runes only visible to her, before she put her hands down. "Alright, that should do it, just stay within ten meters of me." Soon enough, I learned what she meant by 'it'. A bubble of cool air washed over me, emanating from her, and completely displaced the heat of my surroundings.

Amanthe sighed, closing her eyes in bliss. Her shoulders slumped and she swayed, like a fern in a breeze. Ellemayne sat down, smiling, and slumped back on the volcanic rock. Droga didn't betray any sense of comfort, but Mariel practically collapsed, giggling in hysterics as he was relieved from the scorching heat.

Chromie nodded. "Alright then. Have you found Aeonus' time pocket?"

Katalyn shook her head. "No, we haven't. The place is too large, and we don't have enough time to search it. We were hoping you could help us find it."

Chromie considered this for a few seconds. "Well... it won't be easy. Every time pocket is different from another. But, yes. I can." She scratched her head. "Didn't exactly plan for this," She mumbled. She clapped her hands together all of a sudden. "Right, I've got it! Follow me, follow me. I know where it is! Of course, why didn't I understand this sooner?" She looked back at our confused faces. "Oh, um, right. You see, one of my future selves told me that the answer would be in the Ascendant Rise. At the time it made no sense, I mean, Ragnaros hadn't started this yet. This clears it all up." Chromie spun on her heels and started walking towards a seemingly random spot. She was ten paces away when she looked back at us. "Come on, come on!" We obeyed her, not having much choice.

As we walked, Amanthe was the only one next to me. I shifted to my human form, following Chromie's example. Amanthe bit her lips. Tension radiated off her in waves. Finally she spoke. "Selriona, I want to talk to you."

I looked at her. "Finally going to tell me what you're worried about?"

She laughed, and for the first time since I met her future self, it wasn't forced. "No, not that. It's just," Her tone suddenly became serious. "We're going to have to fight Aeonus. From what I understand, he is incredibly powerful. Even if these five are going to help me, I still might not make it out. So I just want to talk to you now." That struck me like a mace. Amanthe wasn't a Kingslayer. Her future self was more powerful, of course, but nowhere near as powerful as the others I was with. Aeonus might kill her.

"Go ahead."

Amanthe took a deep breath and exhaled. "I just want to say, thank you. Thank you for everything you've done for me, well, I guess I should say everything you're going to do for me, not to mention everything you've already done. You're a great friend, and I'm honestly lucky to have met you, and I'm -" She caught herself before she could give something away.

I smiled. "The feeling's mutual, Amanthe. Hey, listen. You will get through this. You can control twilight fire. Aeonus is a dragon, he'll fall to it easily. You. Will. Live. Through. This."

Amanthe shivered. "There's always the chance I won't, though. I want to tell you now." She put her arm around my shoulders. "I'm going to miss you."

I pulled away in shock. "What do you mean you're going to miss me?"

Amanthe pursed her lips, evidently having given away something she wasn't supposed to. "I - You'll find out soon enough"

We soon arrived at the base of the Ascendant Rise. A cliff rose up out of the lava the outlines of cultist buildings visible on the top. Chromie stopped just short of the molten rock. "Alright, I'm going to remove my air-slowing. That should reveal the true temperature of the area. Here I go." Chromie closed her eyes for a second, and opened them. For a moment the scalding heat of the volcanic landscape buffeted me, but in a second it faded into a dull heat. Chromie practically squealed in excitement. "Oh perfect, perfect." She thrust her hands towards the cliff and released a wave of sand. Most of it fell into the lava and melted, but some of it stuck in a spherical shape, outlining a portal. Chromie shook her head in disbelief. "I knew Aeonus was good, but to make a time pocket this complicated?" She whistled. "Alright, come on. They'll be in there."

Chromie launched herself at the portal, vanishing into it. Mariel followed after her with a shout of 'Cannonball!' Droga walked up to the molten rock and hopped into it. Ellemayne and Rom both jumped into it so fast they practically flew. Katalyn pounced at the portal. Amanthe levitated herself above the molten rock and floated in. I entered my true form, and went into the portal via flight.

The world around me plunged into darkness, and for a moment I feared that I had died somehow. But in a few moments the world reappeared around me. We were in a black labyrinthine place, with a black ceiling, floor and walls. We all stood in a wide, circular tunnel that branched out in several places. I looked around at the others, who I could see through some magical source of light. I considered shifting to my mortal form, but decided against it. Chromie nodded. "Alright, here we are. Now before you ask, no, we're not in the middle. You six, group up." Everyone except me went into a group, facing Chromie. She sprayed more sand over them. "Good, you should be able to see a line on the floor, yes?"

Mariel gave a thumbs up. "Check!"

Chromie nodded tersely. "Good. Follow that line, it will bring you to Aeonus. Remember, you can not kill him. You can just make him retreat." When they did nothing, Chromie shooed them off. "Go on! Run! Mush, whatever!" They vanished down a corridor, and soon from sight. What was that saying about 'out of sight, out of mind'? Ha, that's a lie. Chromie sprinkled more sand on herself, and turned to me. "Alright, I'm going to do the same to you. Stay in your true form, and kill the drake that's supposed to slow you. He should be near a portal to the correct time and place, take the portal in his stead. Any questions?"

"Yes, I have one. Where in the name of the Titans are we?"

Chromie spread out her hands, like she were 'taking it all in'. "These are the halls of reality. It's a huge maze, full of twists and turns. It's the base of operations for the Infinite, and it's also where they get their name from. The place is literally endless, twisting through countless times. The larger the group that goes through it, the larger the chance of getting lost. Which is why I gave those others that spell, the one I'm about to give you. You can sometimes hear other universes floating through, noises from alternate realities. Don't listen to them." She sprayed sand over my wings. A line appeared on the ground. It looked like it was made of sand, and it snaked away through the corridors.

"I see it. And I just follow that?" I looked at Chromie.

"Yes, it'll bring you to the Infinite drake. Good luck." I started to follow the trail. "Oh, and Selriona?" I looked back at her. "Don't believe anything you hear. This is a place controlled by the Infinite, they can bring in noises from alternate realities to veer you off course. For instance, they might have you hear Amanthe saying she hates you, by bringing the noise in from a reality where she does. Don't listen to any of it. Goodbye." Then she was gone, scurrying down the twisting pathways.

I walked on, following the trail. Soon I was completely unable to tell where I was in respect to where I started. The path twisted and turned around in all sorts of directions. Sometimes another tunnel branched off, but if the trail didn't go down there, I didn't follow it. The darkness of the place felt oppressive and, yeah, I'll admit it, scary. I looked down at one of the tunnels I wasn't to go down. Not three meters down it, a dark-gray fog obscured any sight. I got an overwhelming urge to go down the path and see what was down there, but I fought it off and continued to follow the trail, which had been vanishing behind me as I went, so I wouldn't be confused as to which way I need to go.

I heard the first voice about ten minutes into my journey. It was a male's. "I have a dream..." It faded into nothing before it could go on.

The next voice was also a male's, but quite different. "Forescore and seven..."

I shuddered as the disembodied voices washed over me, and continued my journey. Wafts of fog engulfed me and made it harder to see the line. A female's voice, honey-sweet, echoed through the tunnels. "You're all alone, you know." I shuddered in fear, and continued on. I heard Amanthe's voice come through as I emerged into another circular area.

"I hate you. You're a horrible person, Selriona, and I hope you rot in the deepest level of the worst hell." I moaned, but remembered what Chromie told me. I laughed. For a realm supposedly controlled by the Infinite, they weren't doing much to stop me beyond scaring me. The tunnel groaned, and a portion of it collapsed on me. I roared in fear as the rubble fell on me, but nothing happened. Fog. The tunnel didn't collapse. It was just fog that looked like stone. I took deep breaths to steady my nerves and continued.

The next voice that came through was my own. "I hope you didn't forget about me, Selriona." I moved forward, faster this time, trying not to listen to the voice as I wound through corridors. "I'm your deepest, darkest fear." No, it couldn't be, I thought I had destroyed her! "I am a portion of yourself, you can't kill me. The best you can do is subdue me." The tunnels groaned again, and briefly rocked from side to side like a boat in a storm. "The best you can do is keep me from gaining control, and that is what you are about to fail to do!" Nalestrasza jumped at me from infront, but faded to mist as she crashed into me. I shrieked and dropped to the ground, paws over my eyes. When nothing happened, I took them off. Of course. It was Nalestrasza, but from a reality where she persisted. I had killed her in my own. I hoped.

The trail of sand brought me to a ninety-degree drop straight down. I flew down it slowly, and made sure to keep an eye on the sand that was stuck to the wall. I heard Verthelion's voice as I descended. "I'll kill you. I'LL KILL YOU! YOU KILLED SELRIONA!" I nearly stopped flying and fell at that, but I caught myself. Probably one where it was Verthelion who was attacked by Lirastrasza, not me. Nothing to worry about. I reached the bottom of the tunnel, and resumed following the trail of sand that had moved back to the floor. The passage groaned and collapsed in front of me, the left wall having grown and squeezed against the right one. I hesitated at it, but ran through, the fog wafting around me. I looked down. The sand was gone! I quickly ran back until I found it, and sighed in relief. That could have been very bad. I went through the wall-disguised fog, keeping a very close watch on the sand as it turned a hidden corner. Once I had gotten out, I cracked my neck to relieve a kink that had formed while I held my head to the ground.

The trail turned a corner. I turned the corner, and nearly had heart failure when I saw that the line ended there. Then I looked up.

The room was enormous, bigger than I could see, though that might have been because of the fog. It was nondescript, except for the portal straight in front of me that seemed to be connected to one of Sulfuron Keep's walls. I walked over to the portal to look into it. That was the place. It had to be. But then, where was the drake I had to defeat?

That question was answered when I heard noise from behind the portal. I looked at the source, stepping to my left.. The fog parted to show an Infinite drake, almost invisible in the darkness save for his silver cracks. He was my size, and I instantly recognized him as the one that slowed me down, the one who made me fail to save Verthelion.

The one who had, by extension, killed my mate.

Fury boiled in my crop. He was to blame. It wasn't Ysera's fault. It was this drake's. I brought all my anger up and, before he could see me, pounced at him, screaming.

"YOU!" He looked up in surprise as I yelled at him, shortly before I barreled into his flank, and almost tore the webbing of his right wing apart. I shoved him on his left side, pinning him down with my forelegs and launched a fireball at him. Sadly, this fireball froze just before it could hit him. He brought his tail around, smacking my left foreleg and forcing me off of him. I heard a sickening crack and a bloom of pain exploded from my leg as the bone broke. I gasped when the Infinite pounced and pinned me on my back. He grinned sadisticly, put one of his forelegs over my broken one and pushed, making me roar in pain. I mustered the strength to bring more flames into my crop. I gritted my fangs and inhaled through my nostrils, and let out a stream of fire that caught that drake on his face. He fell off me in pain, clawing at his head in a vain attempt to stop the shadows from burning through his scales. The fireball he had frozen resumed its path and disappeared into the fog.

I got to my feet, but hissed in pain when I put pressure on my broken leg. I thus began the delicate balancing act of standing on three legs. The flames on the drake's head had slowed down to the point where they nearly froze. He looked at me, eyes narrowed in anger. "I don't have time for this." He jumped through the portal.

"Oh, no you don't," I said, and followed him.

I emerged from the portal just in time to crash into the drake, sending both of us into a fall. I latched onto his stomach, digging my claws as deep as I could. I brought more fire into my crop and was about to launch it when I froze, suspended by some force in mid air. He freed himself from my clutches and examined his wounds. I thawed out and continued on my trajectory, leaving him behind. I turned back around and saw how very little time I had left. I could see my past self battling a green drake, falling towards the lava pool. I flew through the air at the drake again, plowing into him just as he was about to start ascending the Keep. I grabbed onto his tail. I winced, but ignored the searing pain. I bit down on his tail's middle, making him scream. I didn't flap my wings and dragged him down, keeping my fangs latched onto his tail. I blew more flames at him through my death-grip, blue flooding my vision. I noticed another twilight drake next to me. I let go briefly, but held on with my claws, ignoring the pain of my broken one.

"You! Help me!" The twilight drake quickly turned and breathed a river of fire over my victim, engulfing him. "Thank you."

"No problem." He turned away. I let go of the Infinite drake, and he plummeted to the ground, screaming in pain. I noticed that his webbing was torn, the fire having probably destroyed those too. He hit a slab of rock with a thud, blood flowing out along the rock and into the lava, boiling on contact. It was done. He was dead. It was safe. I remembered what Chromie had told me. _'You'll need to take care of the drake that slowed you down, and then 'merge' with your past self. You'll know how to do it when you have to'_. I needed to merge with my past self. But where was I? I quickly ascended the spires, dodging fights. I noticed my past self high above the battle. I pumped my wings as fast as I could to reach her. _You'll know how to do it_. I did. I still don't know how, but I just knew that I needed to fly into my past self. I soared at her.

My past self noticed me and gasped. "Who - " That was when I crashed into myself.

The world around me folded and warped. For a moment I forgot all about my endeavors with Chronormu, I was about to save Verthelion. For another moment I forgot everything _except_ my journey into the past. One of my forelegs was broken but at the same time healed. Both versions of myself resolved themselves, and merged together. For a brief moment I felt the memories of my past self, how dreadfully tired and weak she had been for the past three days. Then they passed off into the distance, like driftwood detaching from a boat stuck on a rock in the middle of rapids. Then it was just me, with my broken leg healed. I quickly snapped my eyes to where I remembered Verthelion to be.

I'd found Verthelion. And Ysera was facing him, about to fire a breath. He wouldn't be able to dodge this one.

_NO!_

The strangest feeling of déjà vu. I screamed and instantly dove at him, determined to shove him out of the way of Ysera's breath just like I had in the dream. The angle he was at meant I would send us flying into the hills, but that didn't matter. I needed to get him out of there, because there was no way he could dodge this on his own. Ysera opened her mouth as if to finalize it. Green light burned deep down in her gargantuan crop. I pushed the air as fast as I could, anything to get to him before Ysera.

Time seemed to slow down, yet everything happened faster than I could process it. I saw a stream of green fluid leave Ysera's maw. I saw Verthelion's eyes widen in shock as I approached him. I felt air pooling under my scales. I crashed into Verthelion, and grabbed him in my claws. A stream of fluid passed over my tail, but did nothing without an orifice for the poison to enter. I felt Verthelion flare in shock, whacking his head against mine. He passed out, and I nearly did so. The world tumbled around me as we half fell, half flew through the air. I crashed into the ground, our momentum sending us rolling over each other until he came to a stop against a rock, in a narrow canyon with high walls four meters wide and ten meters tall, shaped like somebody had taken a giant spear, impaled it into the earth and made an 'L' shape, before cutting off the ends so that you could enter. I looked at his stomach. It moved up and down, slowly. His eyes were closed. But he was breathing. I could hear his heartbeat.

He was alive.

I turned around to see if anyone was pursuing us. A night elf was walking in the canyon, and suddenly, the world froze. I was unable to move. Frozen in time. As she stepped closer, I saw it was the same one that said 'It won't be enough' to me yesterday. She wore black robes patterned with gold trimmings. A necklace with a single piece of amber hung under her neck, a black streak cut through the amber so that it looked like a slitted pupil. As she walked closer, she changed form, becoming a male worgen with the same clothing, golden eyes, and black fur. She/he took a dagger out of nowhere, one of those shifting ones the Infinite used. No. It couldn't be. I had come so close, NO! He stepped to me, but did nothing except change into a female orc.

"It is destiny. Nobody can fight fate." I saw someone running up behind her. A human female in violet robes with two short daggers. The shapeshifter became a male human and stepped to Verthelion, ready to stab him, when Amanthe jumped up and tackled him. She grabbed him around his neck and pulled him back. He fell backward and Amanthe pulled out from under where he was about to fall, a dagger poised and ready to strike.

She struck dirt. The shapeshifter had moved to the opposite side of the canyon, the daggers in his hand. He was tsking at Amanthe, when all of a sudden he became a female draenei. "You shouldn't have done that, you know." A flickering circle of black began to form over his/her head, a portal parallel to the ground. "At any rate, goodbye." He/she began to levitate into the portal.

Amanthe ran at him, one hand burning with twilight flame, the other with shadow in its palm. "Oh no you don't!" She and the shapeshifter both vanished into the portal. I stood there, not like I had any choice, being frozen. A second passed in eerie silence.

Two seconds.

The portal opened up again, and the two fell out again, Amanthe on top. She stabbed the dwarf female just as it turned back into a human male, right in the throat. But there was a problem. She had fallen on his daggers, and they pierced through her stomach. The shape-shifter started choking on his own blood. He died in seconds. I unfroze and ran over to Amanthe, who had rolled off of him/her. There was a hole in her stomach. She waved a glowing hand over it, but nothing happened. She grimaced. "Wound poison. Something else too."

I stood over her. "Amanthe! Are you - are you going to make it?"

She gave the answer that shattered me. "No. I'm not going to. Damn it, and I was just starting to think I've been worrying about nothing."

"Amanthe, what do you mean?"

She winced in pain, and her voice became fainter. "I was called to the Caverns of Time. They told me - they told me that I wouldn't survive the journey, that it was a death sentence for me. That's what's been troubling me the last three days."

A faint tinge of anger seeped into my voice. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've done something, we could've had Chronormu here to help - "

"You promised..."

That deflated my anger. How could I break a promise to somebody dieing, especially Amanthe?

"Please, we can find a way. There has to be a way..."

Amanthe shook her head, her voice fainter. "No. There is no way." She reached up to my head, holding me by my horns. "You're the best friend I could have ever asked for, Selriona. It's been a pleasure knowing you. I'm going to miss you."

No. She couldn't die. "Amanthe, please. I've only known you for a few months..."

She shook her head, but just barely. "You'll know me much longer. My past self isn't dead, remember?" She gave a pained smile. It was pained, but it wasn't forced.

"But you're still dying..." My voice cracked on dying. Tear welled in my eyes.

"I'm alright with that, Selriona." Her voice dropped again. "I've lived for three centuries. I've, I've had a good, long life. I'm ready to see what's next. That's part of the reason why I came here, to die. The other reasons were to help you. Take care, you big sack of scales."

I fought back tears at the way she'd said farewell to me in the plaguelands. "You too, you squishy human"

"I want, I want you to promise me another thing." She winced, probably the result of the poison. "Place my body in the twilight realm and cremate me. Please."

I nodded, already bringing the energy into a portal, straining to get through the sequences and speak at the same time. "I will. I promise." I opened the portal, moved her forward into it. I stepped after her. She was still laying on the ground, looking up into the violet sky.

She looked at me and smiled. Then she closed her eyes. I choked on a breath. "Amanthe... I should have done something. I'm sorry..." I couldn't break my promise to her. I brought a fireball into my crop, and took a breath, deep and shallow at the same time. I exhaled in waves, the flame washing over Amanthe's corpse. I turned to the portal, and looked back at her as the flames ate her, just as she wanted. "Goodbye, my friend."

I stepped back into the real world, closed the portal, and walked over to the still unconscious Verthelion. I flopped down next to him. Amanthe was dead. My best friend was dead. I tried to force it out of my mind. Her past, or was it present? Her present self was still alive. She was alive. But I had still seen my best friend die in my claws. That had shaken me to my core. With nothing left to do, I settled for watching my mate slowly ascend to the waking world. I couldn't allow myself to be sad for Amanthe, not when she was still alive, not when I had just saved and reunited with my mate. I could be sad later. But I wasn't. I was sad then. Verthelion's paws twitched. His eyes fluttered under their lids and opened.

"Selriona?"

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**I seem to have hit a little snag in terms of plotting. I apparently forgot to plan out what Selriona is going to do from here until the next major plot point, so updates are going to slow down until I can figure out exactly what the hell I'm going to do.  
><strong>


	25. Chapter 25:Reunited

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**A VERY important notice. As of the 23rd I am going to a camp for 2 weeks. I will put the camp status on my profile, and until I take that down I am not back. During my stay I will not have any internet, so no updates for the next 2 weeks. Sorry.**

**Like always, thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta-ing.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I stood up when I heard my name. Verthelion looked right up at me, and me right at him. His eyes moved too and fro across me, probably unable to take in the fact that I wasn't dead. Finally, he closed his eyes again. "I'm dead, aren't I?"<p>

I smiled, even though he couldn't see it. "No, you're not dead. Neither am I. I managed to save you from Ysera." I decided not to tell him about the trip with the Bronze. He didn't need to worry about that.

His eyes opened, and he craned his head up to get a better look at me. "You're... not dead?"

I shook my head. "No, and neither are you."

Then next thing I knew I'm on my back with my wings helplessly out to the sides, my forelegs in the air, and my head on its side, with an angry-looking Verthelion pinning me to the ground. I stiffened in fear, remembering Verthelion with glowing red eyes while the Nightmare Elixir had control of my mind. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? It's been MONTHS! I thought you were dead!" He flared his wings, making him look bigger than he was. Then he deflated. He bent down and nuzzled my head. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too. Now please, get off of me!"

He obeyed, but kept looking at me like I was a big, juicy stag. I twisted around and stood up. "Where have you been? I thought, everyone thought you were dead!" Suddenly he pressed his head right next to me. "Tell me everything."

I smiled as he pulled his head away and sat down. I imitated him, and sat right next to him. "Where should I start?"

"Start here. _How the hells are you alive?_ I saw Lirastrasza's fireball crash right into you! How did you survive?"

I did explain it to him. I told him how a mortal outside the cult saved me, much to his surprise. I told him how Samuel and Amanthe became my friends in Stormwind and - didn't - betray me, how I found out his location through Cho'gall's registry, and finally, how I came to find him in Hyjal. He barely believed that mortals outside of the cult knew about what I was and didn't betray me, but the fact that I was alive infront of him persuaded him. I vaguely wondered what had happened to Ellemayne and her friends. They probably went back to their own time, and Chronormu/Chromie was mysterious enough to have spied on me saving Verthelion and told them. I didn't tell Verthelion about the Infinite; he didn't need to worry about that. I had a feeling they wouldn't trouble us again.

I had finished I was lifted out of my depressed mood that resulted from watching Amanthe die and being able to do nothing to stop it - and then I was depressed again. "There's something I want to talk to you about."

"What is it?" There was a hint of worry and panic in his voice, but to this day I can't pinpoint the origin.

"Alright. This is pretty heavy. Do you remember any voice when you were in your egg?"

Verthelion froze for a few seconds. "I do, why?"

"What did they tell you?"

"They told me about how corrupt the red flight is, how the mortals are evil."

I lowered my head. "That's the problem, Verthelion. You see, I heard the same voices. Everyone in our flight did."

"I know that, why are you telling me this?"

"Because the voices, they lied. The red flight isn't corrupt. The mortals aren't all evil, it's only the ones in the cult who are."

Verthelion hesitated. "What," he hissed. " how do you know this?"

"Verthelion, you're a natural born, but I'm a first born. My brood-mother was a red wyrm. I was taken away from her while I was still in my egg, and you know what? The voices told me that she _abandoned_ me. If it lied about that, what else might it have lied about?"

He paused. "What, but, no. You don't know, that might have been the only thing they lied about. Everything else might still have been true! And how do you know you were taken?"

"I remembered it. I remember hearing her fight the cultists. If she were to abandon me, then why would she do that? Also, while I was in Stormwind I had a mortal friend, she was outside the cult." My heart clenched talking about Amanthe. "She knew I was a twilight drake, but still didn't do anything to betray me. What do you think about that? Didn't the voices say the mortals not in the cult would try to kill us at any opportunity?"

He shook his head. "No! No, they didn't! Valiona told us that, and she was right!" He turned his head sideways. "How is Valiona, by the way?"

I looked at the ground as I teared up. "She's dead."

"See, this just reinforces how the mortals are evil! Remember Hemeriona? They tore her wings open with artillery, and when they found her they put a sword in her throat."

"It's not them who are evil, don't tell me you wouldn't have killed them," I snapped. "It's US! _We're_ the evil ones!"

This caught Verthelion off guard. He shifted his head around, clearly trying to process this information. _Please, let him believe me_, I kept thinking. He looked at me. "I-"

"Yes. Me too. As long as we're on Deathwing's side, we're on the evil side."

"But Deathwing is doing the job of the red flight for them, how could his side be the evil one? Wipe out the mortals and kill a thousand -"

" - Or let them stay alive and kill millions over time," I finished for him. "But that's not the job of the Red flight, to prevent death. It's their job to keep life going. And Deathwing's goals are right against that. Verthelion, do you really think that, if he wins, Deathwing will become sane? That he _won't_ raze the world and kill everything edible, resulting in our deaths?"

"Selriona, you're asking me to _betray_ Deathwing! This goes against everything I've ever seen."

I sighed. This was slow going. "Verthelion, look at it this way. If Deathwing wins, everyone will die. No question. He'll kill everything. If Deathwing dies, yes, we'll probably still die, but at least everyone _else_ will live!"

I saw him struggling within himself. I had to push him on to the right side. "Please, Verthelion..."

Finally he sighed. "Alright. I'll trust you on this." A tense silence passed between us. "So... now what?"

"Now, we leave here as soon as possible. Ysera might come hunt us down, and that'll be it." Ysera had come here originally, and who was to say she wouldn't come again? "So, where do you think we should go?"

Verthelion considered this for a moment. "Our cave, the one near the Bastion. Atleast until we're old enough to become adults. Two drakes, we won't be able to change much of anything. We won't be strong enough. But if we become fully grown, we'll be stronger, not to mention having our magic unleashed. Then we'll be able to have actual influence."

I nodded in agreement. "Alright, so, how do we get there?" I asked. "Because I am _not_ flying all the way to the Eastern Kingdoms"

"Hmm... we can fly to Teldrassil, I hear there's a boat there that leads to Stormwind, and we can use, ugh, mortal forms to get inside, and from Stormwind it's easy to get to our cave in the Highlands."

"I like that plan, only one problem."

"And what would that be?"

"I'm a criminal in Stormwind."

Verthelion laughed. "Oh, there's a shocker." He nudged me with a wing. "But anyway, you can just use another form, right?"

I nodded. "That's right," I said, somewhat skeptical. "But then there's the fact that you haven't ever used a mortal form."

"How do you know? It's been a few months," His voice wavered when he spoke about how long I was gone. "I could have used a mortal form since then."

"Have you?"

He shoved me with his wing. "Oh shut_ up_." He pressed his head to mine again. "I missed you so much."

I laughed. "You've mentioned. Now let's get going before Ysera shows up."

"Right." He walked out of the canyon with me right behind him. We both took wing and started to soar around the mountain, heading north-west according to my internal compass. Within minutes we passed out of sight of Sulfuron Keep, and were flying around the side of the mountain, trees barely grazing the bottom of our paws. A layer of clouds enveloped the mountain, lower down. I got a sinister smirk on my face.

"Verthelion!"

"Yes?"

"Race you to Felwood!" I sped up and shot through the sky. I heard Verthelion sigh in annoyance and speed up behind me. I dove under the clouds and burst back up, streaming them after me. I looked back at Verthelion, only to not find him. I stopped and looked around, trying to figure out where he was. I got my answer when he burst through the clouds underneath me, smashed into me, and made me lose my balance for a few seconds, before racing ahead of me. I grinned. Oh, this would be fun. I pushed myself as fast as I could, and slowly but surely, I gained air on him. I grabbed his tail, making him jerk in shock. That was all the opening I needed to take the lead and dive under the clouds with Verthelion right behind me. The wind screamed past me, like a banshee's wail. Green mist washed over us, making me cough. I looked back at Verthelion as I slowed to a hover.

"I win."

He rose and smacked me with a wing, catching himself as he descended to my height. "Surprise, surprise. I see being in a mortal form for several months didn't diminish your skill."

I chuckled. "You know that I've always loved to fly," I said. I looked at the ground below us. A green puddle of a lake was nearby, with ooze dripping along it. I figured it was as good a place as any. "Alright, let's practice your mortal form." We set down on the ground, right next to the tainted lake. The trees of Felwood scared me. They were hollowed out and dripped with green slime. They looked like faces, souls in eternal torment bound to trees. Given the region's history with demonic corruption, I wouldn't be too surprised if that was the case. "Okay. Try a human form, those are easiest." I shifted to my mortal form in a heartbeat.

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"Well, try to bring magic through your body. Imagine energy molding yourself into a human." Verthelion closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, and out. Violet energy flickered along his scales. He discolored and shrunk, but he let out a breath and reformed. "Try again." I got it on my first try. Was it really so difficult?

Verthelion began to compress again. His horns split again and again, his scales changed color, with some of them detaching from his body. He shrunk smaller and smaller as he was forced to his hind legs... and returned to his true form again. "How did you do it so fast? This is absurdly difficult."

I shrugged. "I've done it a lot of times, but I still got it on my first try." I smirked. "Are you saying you're bad at shapeshifting?"

He growled at me, before launching a fireball at me I only barely managed to twist myself away from. "Easy, easy! I'm a human right now!"

"Which makes it so much easier for me to do this," he said with forced lack of emotion. He pounced at me, pinning me to the ground. "Admit defeat, mortal! You've lost."

I rolled my eyes. "Honestly, Verthelion? Seriously, you need to learn to use a mortal form so we can use the boat to Stormwind, not to mention get out of the city in the first place!"

"Alright then. Shapeshift your way out of this one, and I'll go back to it."

I smiled. Already an idea was forming in my brain. "Oh, my pleasure." I contracted my form. The magic was stubborn and refused to mold my body, but I forced it through myself. In a moment I had become a gnome, with Verthelion's paws in the dirt to either side of me. I rolled to the side and jumped up over him(He looked _enormous _from that perspective.) and landed on his back.

He thrashed his head around. "What are you doing?" I let my illusion dissipate entirely, and the sudden weight forced him to the ground.

I placed my claws on either side of his neck. "So, what were you saying about admitting defeat?"

He groaned. "Alright, alright. I'll shapeshift, just get off of me!" I obeyed him, and sat down on my haunches as I watched him struggle with the magic. I swept my tail from side to side as the purple magic pulsated around him, like it were trying to crush him into a smaller space. Slowly but surely, Verthelion did contract into a human form. His hair was dark and almost violet like mine, and he wore purple robes akin to those worn in the cult. He stumbled, trying to get his balance.

I shifted to my human form and walked up next to him. "It's tricky at first. You need to keep walking, eventually your brain will pick up how often it needs to balance you. Here's a hint: A lot."

"Thanks for the warning," He grumbled, and took a shaky step. He started to fall, but caught himself on his hands, slowly walking his legs forward. He threw his body back, but he put too much force into it and fell backwards onto the dead soil.

I took pity on him and helped him to his feet. "It's going to take practice. I wasn't able to use stairs for quite a while."

Verthelion let go of my hand and took a few shaky steps forward. "Alright, I've got this under control. I just need to balance myself, and all is well." He took more steps, growing more confident with each one.

I nodded and walked in front of him. "Good. Now, there are a few things that mortals do, or rather, don't do. For some reason they make big deals out of their bodily functions, from mating to waste excretion."

"Why would they -"

"I honestly do not know, but they do. So if we come into contact with any, just, um, don't mention bodily functions."

"Alright, understood. Now, let's keep going."

He started to shimmer, but I stopped him. "Oh no you don't. You're practicing walking. I had to learn it, and now so are you." He sighed, but stopped releasing his illusion. I walked forward, with Verthelion stumbling behind me. The region known as Felwood wasn't long from east to west, and luckily that was where we were going. In no time we had happened across a road, covered in the same green slime that was in every tree. The trees themselves had a habit of imbedding sinister thoughts in my mind. They all seemed to be looking at me. Each 'face' was pointed at us as we came upon them. It took all I had not to whimper in fear, but I was certain Verthelion was picking up on my fear; I felt his radiate from him in tidal waves. The small hairs on my skin stood straight up, pulling the skin they were attached to with them and creating goosebumps. I sensed something ahead of me instinctively, and I could tell Verthelion did as well. One tree in front of us, a wide, old tree, was 'facing' away from us.

From around it, something emerged.

It was vaguely kaldorei, but in addition to its ears, long horns stretched behind his head. Instead of clothing, thick orange fur covered his legs, arms and shoulders. The hands were misshapen and enlarged, with claws on the end. A tail stretched behind him, and the feet were replaced with cloven hooves. Before either of us could react he thrust his hands out. A web of shadow energy flew out and ensnared us. I felt my fire suppress within my body, the shadow magic keeping me immobilized. The satyr laughed. When he stopped, he pulled his outstretched hand in, pulling me and Verthelion into the air and next to him.

"Ah, fresh lambs to sacrifice. It's been such a long, _long _time since we've had fresh meat in this region. Kil'jaeden will be pleased..." He started walking away, bringing us with him like fish in a net. We could have easily reverted to our true forms and escaped; If the size increase didn't overtax the spell itself, our natural resistance to dark magic would have dispersed it. But Verthelion shot me a look that very clearly said, _Play along, let's see what he's up to._ I wanted to ask him why he wanted to do that, but I thought against it. He trusted me with leaving Deathwing's side. I trusted him with that.

The satyr walked up to a tree with a tunnel carved into it that descended into the bowels of the earth. He led us down through the ensnaring magic, Verthelion in front of me. Torches lit up the space every here and there, and soon the tunnel opened up into a wide cave. Felhounds slightly smaller than Mariel's were snuffling around in corners. The ground went up above the floor, forming a sort of walkway over it. In the middle of the walkway was a stone altar with red engravings. I could smell them; they were made of blood. Over in the corner were the mangled bones of a corpse long eaten, probably by the felhounds. The satyr walked over to a wall and placed his hands on it. He chanted some words under his breath and pulled out a dagger from the earth, a simple, crude dagger. He flicked his hand over to the altar, and Verthelion levitated over above it. With another hand motion I was suspended over the floor. He lowered Verthelion onto the altar and prepared his dagger.

"Let this sacrifice serve as testament to the-"

"Now, Selriona!" Both of us unleashed our true forms at once. The magical spell keeping us contained flexed as it tried to compensate for our increased size, but the magical tendrils were sucked back into the satyr's clawed, malformed hands. Verthelion's suddenly increased size threw the dagger out of his hand to the felhounds below. The satyr gasped and tried to run for the exit, but I cut him off with a flame breath.

He jumped across to the other side of the chamber, an impossible distance, yet he crossed it anyway. "Feed, my pets! There's plenty for you all!" The felhounds howled and began to run up the ramps leading up to us, but Verthelion let out a wide spray of fire that caught half of them instantly. They ignited and burned to ashes, dispersing into shadows as the magic binding them to the physical world came undone. I incinerated the other half in similar fashion, but one ducked safely under the walkway. Something warm splashed against my head, and I looked up to see the satyr charging up a spell. He launched a skull at me, a laughing, dark skull with a trail of shadows behind it. It crashed into my head and exploded like it were made of water, but otherwise the shadowbolt did nothing to harm me.

The satyr growled. "Resistant? Very well... BURN!" A wave of flame exploded from the satyr in all directions, catching the one remaining felhound just as it came up the ramp next to its master. Both Verthelion and I were forced to the far end of the chamber as the satyr channeled an inferno. Flames sparked along his fur, but didn't seem to cause him any harm. Smoke burned my eyes and flame licked my scales, just far enough away. We both launched fireballs at him, with noticeable results. They rippled along his skin, probably because of a protective enchantment. We fired more, each one diminishing his defenses, until they finally fell. The satyr exploded into a fireball from his own spell. He screamed and thrashed about, but in moments he was a charred husk. Luckily the chamber was mostly stone, so the flames from his spell didn't spread. Once it was over, I shifted to my mortal form and knelt next to the ashes. Something in the corner caught my eye, in the pile of bones. A flash of gold. I walked over to the bones. Whoever they were, a letter was inside their ribcage. I pulled it out and broke open the golden seal, which was weakened through time and the surroundings. The letter was, thankfully, written in Common, which I could read to a certain extent.

_We have tracked the Legion's agents to a cavern. We do not know what they want, but our leading paladin Commander Dawnbreaker sensed a depression in the light at the cavern's estimated location. We believed there to be a powerful force of darkness, but Dawnbreaker sensed that it had been moved to a location in Darkshore. We are preparing to investigate the caverns, but after the attack of the corrupted wildlife last week, Dawnbreaker fears that we lack the required manpower to push into the cavern, as he senses a powerful satyr there. On his behalf I request reinforcements. I have sent this messenger to send this letter, as we siege the cavern. We might not be able to enter it without having a deathwish, but we _can_ contain it._

_ -Judias Stemotar_

I walked up the ramp to Verthelion, who was still in his true form. I held up the letter to him. "What do you think of this?"

He looked at the letter for a few seconds, reading it. "Well, clearly the messenger was caught. But what do you think that the powerful force of darkness would be? Further on, who were the mortals looking for it, and who were they asking for reinforcements?"

I shifted to my true form and shook my head. "I don't know. But this sounds like something worth looking into. And they assume it's in Darkshore, which is where we're headed in the first place._"_

"Why should we? It's none of our business, and what if the Legion already moved this, whatever it is?"

"Seeing as how the Legion wants to _kill_ everything, I'd say it is our business, and to find it, well, I have an idea." I brought magic up through me. It was painfully difficult. The magic swirled into a spherical violet mist, while my mind rearranged runes in the appropriate shapes to open a portal. I took a deep breath from exhaustion, and stepped into the twilight realm.

I waited there for a few seconds before Verthelion joined me. "How hard was that?"

"You have no idea. Let's look around for anything that seems out of place." We both started to walk around the twilight realm, looking for anything curious. I shifted to my mortal form and gestured for Verthelion to follow me up the narrow spiral passage up. He joined me in his human form after a few failed tries. Outside I found a black line, as thick as a rope. It led north, into Darkshore. I released my illusion. "I think this is it. Let's follow it, see where it goes."

My mate also dispersed the magic holding him in a human form. "Odd. I never knew we could see corruption in the twilight realm."

"Seems we can. We follow this, we arrive at whatever's causing it. Even if we can't kill it, we'll know what it is and we can escape into the twilight realm. Knowledge _is_ power, after all."

He considered this, and nodded. Then he shot off after the thin rope.

I smiled. Hadn't he learned by now? He couldn't beat me in flight. In no time I had caught up to him, moving incredibly fast with the energy given to me by the twilight realm. As we flew onward, I felt a little ripple in the back of my mind as the portal I had created closed. We were moving so fast that in no time, Felwood had fallen behind us and the countless rivulets of Darkshore made their appearance as the thread of shadow along the ground grew thicker and thicker. Darkshore had no trees to us, but that was because they were all in the physical plane. The black fog veered sharply to the right, and I attempted to turn after it... only to have Verthelion crash into me and send us both rolling along the ground into a tributary.

Water washed over my head and panic seized my heart. I launched myself up, kicking my legs and using my wings to stay above water. Moments later Verthelion broke out next to me. The water thrashed around in rapids, tossing us around helplessly. It was only the energy from the twilight realm that gave us that strength to stay afloat and not drown. I tried to claw up the sides, but the rapids forced me back down. I came up next to a rock and the water pulled me down with incredible force. I submerged for a few terrifying seconds before I burst back up, gasping and taking deep gulps of precious air. I latched onto the rock, my amplified strength preventing me from being washed away. Behind me, Verthelion was pulled further and further away by the current.

"A little help here?" He called after me.

I launched after him, flying over to him. He grabbed onto a rock, the sudden lack of motion making the water push up around him. "Verthelion! Mortal form, I'll be able to pull you out!" He grimaced, but slowly energy started to flow around him. His grasp on the rock slackened as he returned to his mortal form, not knowing how to hold on. The current swept him away, but not before I could grab him in my claws and hoist him out of the water onto the riverbed, where he released his illusion. We both shook the water off ourselves.

"That was close." I said. "Alright, now, where's the trail?_" _

We both looked around for a few seconds before Verthelion faced a direction. "That way, I think. Let's go" We both took to the air, and that time I flew next to Verthelion, not bothering to pass him. I'd almost lost him again. The black fog led us along a complex path along the ground; evidently the Legion had tried to make it hard to follow. Soon we reached a place where the fog abruptly stopped, with several red dots around. On closer inspection I saw that the trail simply went underground, and soon we were both walking through a cave. There was nothing alive in the cave, but that was very likely due to us being in a different plane of existence. We followed the trail of black to a large chamber, one that could not have been made naturally.

The room was a perfect cylinder, with eight green crystals floating around the edge in a perfect circle. The room was made of black metal, twisted with spikes on it, outlined with green. The crystals had glowing red eyes in them, looking _right at me_. I could see red light pulsing within them, and the red light was pulled out of each of the crystals into a filament and sucked into the middle, turning black halfway into the middle. Each of the streams pooled into a large black shape in the middle, towering maybe three meters tall and one across, too blurred for me to make out any detail. Verthelion and I both looked at the shape in the middle in awe.

Verthelion was the first to swallow the lump in his throat. "Well, let's see what it is?"

My voice shook. "Sure. I'll open a portal. We'll go through, and if it's too powerful, we get back into the twilight realm."

I took a deep breath. "Right. Get out, see what it is, get back in. Destroy it if we can." I created the portal back into the physical realm. The moment it stabilized I felt suction coming from the other end. "Well, get ready." Verthelion stepped infront of me and jumped through the portal, with me right behind him.

The tracts of light that I saw in the twilight realm dispersed the moment reality came back to me. The eight crystals were glowing, but very dimly, their energies being drained. Shadow magic flowed out of each one into a central vortex, a cloud of fog being sucked into a central construct. Wind whistled around me, trying to pull me in. The construct itself was one of the most amazing and depressing things I had ever seen.

At first I thought that it was an illusion, because there was nothing holding it together. But as I looked closer, I saw that this was an entity of pure shadow magic. The top was a half-circle with a hole in it, much like a protractor I had seen in one of the shops in Stormwind. It was connected to a series of other dark structures, runes that had carved places into it that held other coils of magical energy, looking like eyes. It spun around slowly, shadow plates whirling around a central core that looked almost like a key. Light shone around this central core, but instead of coming out of it, the light was being sucked in, and concentrated into a thicker medium as it got closer. The power from the crystals flowed into the core. Chimes filled the air, slow and melancholy. I sensed a tragedy with this creature; it wasn't supposed to be like this.

A weight seemed to constrict around my lungs. I felt the wind increase in its intensity. The 'eyes' of the magical construct whirled around to look at me. Filaments of shadow energy arced out of the central core and into both me and Verthelion, before arcing between the two of us. A tidal wave of emotion smashed its way into my mind, coming from the creature. Regret. Sorrow. Fear. Good will. Helplessness. I didn't understand it. How could something as clearly powerful as it was be _helpless?_ I flinched under the intensity of the shadow lightning, which grew thicker each time it arced into us, and winced under the vortex's pull.

"We need to get out of here," I yelled to Verthelion. I forced myself back towards the portal. Whatever it was, it was too powerful for us. Verthelion launched himself at the portal at the same time I did, but I simply froze, caught in a shell of shadow energy. The magic lifted me and turned me around to face the vortex. The shadow lightning arced harmlessly across the shell I was trapped in.

Another blast of telepathy assaulted my mind. I saw Seradane, with a Twilight dragon sitting on the ramp, sealing off the portal. He had scars along his back, and must've been transferred from Deepholme or someplace else; he wasn't at all familiar. I felt understanding and knowledge of my intentions. I saw a vision in my mind of the same construct, but glowing brightly instead of being dark, light radiating from its core instead of being drawn in. Demons came into the scene and corrupted the construct, drained its light and made it into what it was. The telepathy reduced itself to words. _I know what you are. I know who you are. I know you are freed from the tricks._ I winced at the power behind those thoughts. This construct could destroy me with a single twist of its plates, turn me to ashes with a thought. _I have been corrupted and paraded around by the Legion, fed shadow magic to deepen my darkened state so that they may turn me into a weapon._

Verthelion. Where was he? _I have made the portal one way. Now, you need to see this, to understand.  
><em>

I saw another vision, this one of the construct far darker than now. Dark mist swirled about its form. Draenei-like demons with red skin channeled more shadow energy into it, and the being flickered, shadows spreading down its form. It flashed brightly, the largest of its form being destroyed save for the top. A creature of darkness formed, a vortex of unstoppable strength. Its eyes glowed with raw power, and with a single attack it annihilated all of the demons and consumed their energies for itself._ I give you this knowledge so that you may, once Deathwing's fall has come to pass, free me from the demons and place me under control so that I may regenerate. Deal with the World-breaker first. I can hold out for years yet. Even so, it takes nearly all my power to prevent my instability from killing you. I will release you now. Go back to your plane of existence, and leave before you die. Remember the one of your kind that I showed you. When the time comes for you to mature, he is who you shall go to. He is who shall guide you to what you must do after. _The adult flashed through my mind again, but this time Verthelion and I were on the ground around him, a heavy fog of shadow energy around us as we shifted and grew. The shell of shadow energy flickered and dispersed, exposing me once again to the powerful - even with my resistance to it_ -_ shadow lightning, not to mention the pull of the vortex. I pulled myself over to the portal and stumbled inside, burning on the inside from the magical onslaught. The portal wavered and closed of its own accord.

Verthelion leapt at me at me and nudged my face. "Are you alright? I couldn't get through, the portal wouldn't let me! I don't think I could stand to lose you twice." I groaned, and in spite of the strength acquired from the twilight realm, passed out.

In my dream I was a whelp. I flapped forward a single meter and became a drake. I took another step forward and was fully grown. The environment around me sprung into existence as I searched for it. I was in a deep, lush jungle. Plants grew all around me, birds hummed in the air, completely oblivious to me. I wondered why, not being lucid. I took several massive steps forward to a lake and looked down into it. I had no reflection. For some reason this made me furious. I swiped my tail, knocking down several trees. I wanted to leave that place and go someplace meaningful. My dream complied and placed me in the place Valiona had watched over me. I contracted back into a drake, suddenly aware of the dream being a dream. A red drake settled down next to me, and I nearly had heart failure.

"YOU!" I jumped away from Nalestrasza, who simply looked at me with dull eyes.

She bared her fangs. "Yes, me." She sighed, looking at the ground. "I've never been the same since you destroyed my consciousness, you know. I'm not self-aware anymore."

"You sure are talking like you are!" I said, remaining suspicious.

"That's because you think I will. Now I'm nothing more than a projection of your mind. Such a shame."

"What do you want, then?"

"I want to talk to you about the construct you just saw." A replica of the living shadow energy formed infront of me. "That thing used to be a being of good. It was tainted by the demons and darkened, somehow. If they continue, it will become a being of unparalleled power." The construct became the void creature that it had shown me in its vision. "The Legion will not be able to contain it. Its power will grow at an almost unstoppable rate."

"If you're only a projection of my mind, then how do you know all this?"

Nalestrasza scoffed. "I know whatever you do. Tell me, did you not sense the power in it? Did the runes making up the construct not make some glimmer of sense to you?"

"Well, yes," I hesitantly said. "But that doesn't explain why _you_ know it."

"Actually it does. Where do you think your mind got the power to give me self-awareness? To craft entire worlds in your dream, while you still stay more or less as smart as you are in waking?"

"Well..."

"Your mind is far more powerful than you give it credit. Your subconscious made the connection roughly two seconds before you passed out."

"Oh. So, continue with the doomsday thing?" The void creature infront of me threw its hands up before letting them fall back down. It looked left, then right, then back at us.

"Well, seeing how fast the construct was absorbing the shadow energy, you have a few years until it becomes _that._" She motioned towards the void entity. "By then, the war against Deathwing will have undoubtedly come to an end, unless the Legion finds a way to accelerate the darkening. You are not strong enough to free the construct. Even holding itself back, it will tear you apart long before you can destroy its bonds. You'll need to find people who have stood up to something like it before."

My mind came to a conclusion quickly. "The Kingslayers."

Nalestrasza nodded. "Yes, the Kingslayers. They've fought one of these before, it was the only one the Legion had captured, and even then they didn't know their true potential. The Kingslayers destroyed the construct's darkened form and it almost instantly became the void creature. Even fighting and gathering energy for the first not even two minutes of its life, it nearly destroyed them, and it didn't live longer than that. Now, think. If the Legion could keep something _that_ powerful hidden for, say, days, weeks even, and then unleash it upon Azeroth, well, you don't need to be told the implications of _that_."

My blood ran cold. "How do you know all this? I sure as hells don't!"

"Selriona, you're magical, and came in contact with the construct's mind. You felt how powerful its telepathy was. Is it so absurd that you were given some additional information to sort out in your dreams?"

I shook my head as understanding dawned upon me. "No, it isn't. So, what you're saying is that I need to find a way to get the Kingslayers to trust me and have them contain that shadow construct before it can kill us all."

Nalestrasza nodded. "Correct. Oh, and another thing." The dream started to fade. I felt 'out of it'. "The construct is called a Naaru." I woke up.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. <strong>

**A note about the darkened Naaru. My theory is that if a Naaru loses enough energy, either through draining, combat, or 'nullification' (Being fed shadow energy, akin to adding a negative to a positive number), it will become a darkened state and passively cause destruction, but retain its free will and try to slow itself down. My theory is that if the darkened Naaru continues to be fed shadow energy, continue to expend its own energy on combat (Adding a negative to a negative), or has its form destroyed it will become the void god thing M'uru did and basically lay the smackdown on everything.**

**From what I've gathered, darkened Naaru themselves are exceedingly rare, so such 'void gods' would be even rarer, and M'uru was the first darkened Naaru the legion could observe. My theory also goes on that Naaru that haven't gone so far as to become void gods regenerate over time, slowly returning even from the deepest darkening to full light. Naturally, once the Legion saw how powerful a destroyed Dark Naaru becomes, they desired to capture one and force the transformation, but don't want to destroy its form since that would be, well, impossible, seeing as how the Dark Naaru would likely have little inhibitions about attacking demons.**


	26. Chapter 26:Bribed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Oh god it feels good to be back. Somewhat **shorter chapter while I get back into the swing of things.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I woke up groaning and with a headache. The violet haze of the world around me pulsed and quaked. Something pushed at me as sounds echoed around me. I wasn't sure if I was hearing them directly, or if I was hearing it from across a metaphorical iceberg which they rippled around and across. Something pushed at my flank again, making me moan. The blurred sounds began to solidify into words.<p>

"Seiona, ar yu o-ay? Ah wa so woied!"

I moaned, shifting my head around. I looked at the source of the noise, a large indigo blur. My head wobbled and set back down. Every part of my being from my neck to my wings to my tail ached, the muscles sometimes contracting slightly on their own.

The blur pushed at me again, making me groan in pain. Couldn't it just leave me alone?

My eyesight started to clear up, as did my hearing. The blur started to take on a shape.

"Seliona, come n, wake ap!"

I shook my head, ignoring the ringing in my ear-plates. I looked closely at the shape, and comprehension dawned on me. "Verthelion? How long was I out?"

Sight and sound refined themselves further. "A few minutes. I was so worried! I don't think I could bear to lose you again. You don't know what it's like."

I winced internally. Oh, but I did.

I raised my form on my legs. "Ugh. I feel terrible." The world tilted sickeningly from side to side. That Naaru had really done a number on me.

"Shake it off. We need to get out of here."

"Why? We aren't in any danger in the twilight realm."

Verthelion opened his mouth to protest, but closed it. He went on over to another topic of conversation. "What happened to you with that thing?"

"It talked to me. The Legion enslaved it and are going to make it a weapon nobody will be able to stand against."

"What do you mean it talked to you? It still has free will?"

"Yeah, yeah it does. It was trying to hold itself back when we were attacked by it. It... wow. It showed me how we can become adults."

"What? How?"

"I don't entirely understand, but there's going to be an adult of our kind at Seradane. I don't know if he's there now. It might've been a vision of the future."

Verthelion's claws tightened around the earth. I wondered if in the physical world, it would look like the earth was moving on its own. "How can we trust it? It _did_ try to kill us."

"It was unstable and tried to hold itself back."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do." In truth, I really did. It might've been the information it implanted in me. I felt inclined to not trust that knowledge, but I felt like that construct couldn't try to deceive somebody if it wanted to. "It told me that we need to deal with Deathwing, then convince the Kingslayers to free it from the demons so it can regenerate."

"Whoa. Back up. Deal with Deathwing? What's that supposed to mean?"

I froze. I didn't like that. I only said that because that was what the construct/Naaru had said. 'Deal with the World-Breaker'. "I don't, I'm not sure."

"Really? Not sure? Cause it sounded a _lot_ like you wanted the two of us to fight a damn _ASPECT! _What are you thinking?"

I shook my head. "It's not me, that's what the construct told me."

"Alright, alright. Tell me everything that it said, and we'll figure out what we do from here."

"Alright. I already told you about the adult at Seradane. The Naaru told me, after Deathwing's fall, free it and place it under control so that it may regenerate. It also said that it can hold out for several more years before it... transforms, and apparently this transformation would destroy the entire world."

Verthelion stood in thought for a few minutes. Finally he nodded. "Alright, so here's what I think we should do. We go about our earlier plan of becoming adults, and, assuming that there is an adult at Seradane when we need to transform, and then we go see if Deathwing falls, but we do so from the twilight realm and do not kill ourselves. If he does, we use mortal forms to convince the Kingslayers about that Naaru thing. They'll contain it and the world will not end, so all will be well."

"Sounds like a plan.", I said. Verthelion growled at me. "Excuse me?"

"What?" He growled again, but this time he noticed it too. "Ah. We'd better go hunt." I just then noticed how hungry I was. When was the last time I had eaten?

I nodded in agreement and lead the way out of the Naaru's chamber. We walked far away from the red dots of fog, and once we were sufficiently distant, I took us to the physical realm. We both stood still for a few seconds, before picking up the scent of a sloth of bears. I nodded to Verthelion. "Bears. I'll fly around them. Use a mortal form, you can control your scent in it. Get close, then on my signal, release the illusion and attack."

"Got it." He slowly began to shimmer violet. I didn't stick around to witness his transformation, and launched myself into the sky through the twigs and leaves. I circled around to the other side and landed in a mortal form. I pulled at the strands of magic around my form, removing all of my scent. I slowly crawled up to the bears. There they were, drinking from a small pond. A male, a female, and three cubs. I saw Verthelion hiding in the bushes across from me. I vaguely noticed that he hadn't been able to remove his scent, and the bears were still. I waited for the bears to turn around, and put a hand up. I pointed to myself and at the male, then I held up 3 three fingers. 2 fingers. 1 finger.

Verthelion got the signal, and the two of us jumped out, illusions removed mid-air.

Verthelion landed on the female and I on the male, digging our claws into their necks and severing the vertebrae before they could make a noise. The cubs bolted, but not before he tripped one that had been close to its mother, followed by bringing the club down on it. He chuckled. "Let's eat."

We both ate our kills and split the cub, Verthelion getting the muscle and me getting the organs.

"Why didn't you mask your scent?"

He shrugged, gulping down some flesh. "I couldn't. The magic was too difficult to manipulate."

"Odd. It was easy for me." We sat around licking the blood off our fangs and talking about how long we thought it would take to get to the boat when I heard a small noise. I instantly froze and switched to Draconic. "Verthelion, did you hear that?"

"No, hear what?" He responded in Draconic, automatically suspicious when I had suddenly changed tongues. The noise occurred again, a twig snapping, followed by the running of feet.

We both spoke at the same time. "Someone found us!" We both sprinted after them, trying to wind our way through the trees. I took to the air to circle around, with Verthelion keeping the chase up. I passed the mortal, hearing panting. I settled down further ahead, blocking off their escape. Slowly, the noise of Verthelion chasing after the mortal caught up. I prepared.

A night elf whelp burst out of the bushes, saw me, and veered to his right. I kept up with him easily, weaving in between the trees as he simply slipped through them, being accustomed to them no doubt. But I was faster, and that more than compensated for his agility and familiarity. Verthelion suddenly jumped out of the woods and pinned the whelp to the ground with one paw.

I stopped and stood next to Verthelion, looking at the night elf. He had dark green hair and golden eyes. The rest of his body was hidden underneath Verthelion's left leg. "What are we going to do with it?" He asked me in Common.

"_Him_. He saw us. He heard us talking about where we were going. He could easily tell someone. But then, he's just a whelp." _Why do I hesitate to kill a child now?_ I wondered. _I killed that red whelp in the Wetlands. Of course, that was before... before the tricks of the Old Gods were revealed to me._

The kaldorei was hyperventilating, looking back and forth between me and Verthelion.

Verthelion kept pressure applied. "We can't just let it go. It'll tell someone, and they'll cut us off at Lor'danel when we rest. If we leave it alive he'll indirectly kill us."

The night elf whimpered something in Darnassian, causing Verthelion and I to look at each other puzzled. He repeated it again in Common, albeit with a heavy accent. "I-I won't tell anyone." He shrunk down under Verthelion's weight "Please don't kill me."

"Any why not?" Asked my mate. "Why would you not go tell us? You might say that, yes, but you can easily do it anyway."

I looked sideways at the whelp. It would have been so easy. And Verthelion was right. He could easily reveal us if we let him go, even if he said he wouldn't. But then... "He's a whelp. They don't really lie that much, Verthelion."

"It's a mortal, remember? They're-"

"Evil?" That shut off his train of thought, making him examine the whelp again, who was still hyperventilating. I switched to draconic. "At any rate he thinks _we're_ evil, and is very likely to not believe us if we say otherwise. What _are_ we going to do with him?"

The whelp stuttered. "Wait! Dragons like magical artifacts, right? I have one. I'll give it to you, I won't tell anyone, just let me go, please!"

This made Verthelion laugh. "You hear that, Selriona? He mistakes us for blues!" He said in Common, before turning back to the whelp. "Why would we want a-"

I cut him off. "Hold on. This magical artifact... what is it?"

Verthelion looked at me. "Seriously," He hissed to me in Draconic. "Are you actually going to be _bought_?" I didn't answer that. I felt a burning curiosity explode in me. I wanted that artifact. Whatever it was, I felt like I could use it. If I could use its magic, then the possibilities were boundless. I didn't want it; I _needed_ it.

The elf seized the slim chance of survival. He fiddled his hands under Verthelion's claws and held out an object. I shifted to my mortal form and snatched it away from him. "Selriona what are you DOING? That could be cursed!"

I looked at Verthelion. "Why would it be cursed? I'm very certain he wasn't planning on giving it to us before he saw us."

"He could've picked it up while I was chasing him!"

"Now you're just being paranoid." I inspected the object closely. It was a round metal disk that fit into the palm of my hand. Above one half was a small glass dome, barely curved. Between the metal and the glass were small green preserved leaves pressed into the glass. As I watched green energy flowed along the leaves, twirling around their stems, before fusing back into the metal. Definitely magical. I rubbed a finger over the glass, mesmerized by it. I laid a palm over the glass; It seemed to pulse under my touch, radiating a comforting warmth. I smiled. The power in it seemed to satisfy some faint, gnawing desire in me.

Verthelion fixed me with a look that screamed '_Honestly?' _He turned back to the whelp, letting go of a held breath. "Alright then. Exactly what is to stop us from simply taking it and killing you?"

This made him blanch. "Please. I swear on Elune's name I won't tell anybody. I-I'll be in enough trouble from my father for losing that!"

I looked up from the artifact. "Let him go, Verthelion. He won't tell anyone, not after making that promise." I returned to looking at it, mesmerized by the energies in it. If I could figure out how to use it...

Out of the corner of my eyes, I could clearly see Verthelion arguing with himself. Eventually he took his weight off the whelp, and in the blink of an eye he was gone. He sighed and fixed me with an annoyed look. "I hope you're happy. You just traded information that could kill us for some magical... thing!"

"He won't tell anyone."

"How do you know that?"

"It's a culture thing. When a kaldorei swears on Elune's name, they really won't break the promise."

"Why wouldn't they?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, it's a culture thing. It probably made sense long ago, but now it doesn't seem to make as much. Either way, he won't give us away, _and_," I held up the disk, "I got this out of it. If only I could figure out how to use it..." I fiddled with the disk, turning it over and over in my hands, tapping it, doing nothing useful. I shrugged and removed my illusion. "Anyway, we'd better get going." I clutched the disk with my right foreleg and started to hover.

Verthelion nodded. "A culture thing. Right. Let's get going then. We should probably find a place to rest for the night."

We both took off into the air. I didn't speed past Verthelion so that we could both easily tell the other if we found a place. The rest of the day was spent traveling onward and looking for any cave to sleep in for the night. The disk's druidic magic constantly radiated into my blood and warmed me. We stopped a few times to eat, and soon enough, the sun was dipping below the horizon as the sky's blue turned deeper. On the opposite end of the sun rose up Azeroth's very shadow, a thick veil of dark blue lined with red that pulled up like a curtain, the red fizzling out as the dark blue swam across the world to slam down the last vestiges of the sun's rays and become black. Of course by then we'd found a place to sleep for the night.

It was a cave elevated by a hill and surrounded by rivulets, meaning any wildlife would have a hard time getting there. The ground lifted up had cracks in the stone, which lead me to the conclusion that the hill - and maybe even the cave - was caused by the Cataclysm. The cave system itself was small; a short near-vertical drop into a twisting tunnel, which lead into a large room with zero lighting. Using his fire as light, Verthelion had told me the room was about ten meters in all directions, with no signs of instability. I nodded. It would be a good spot to rest for tomorrow.

Verthelion and I both sat at the mouth of the cave. He was laying down on his stomach with his forelegs outstretched and tail straight back, wings folded against his flanks. I was in a mortal form - orcish this time - so I could more easily examine the disk. I had a slow, creeping feeling in my stomach that the artifact was utterly worthless unless you knew how to operate it as opposed to operable, but not to its full potential. On the other hand, you might simply need to be more powerful magically to be able to understand it, which was something that would happen when I was an adult.

_If_ I became an adult.

I put the disk on the ground, glass facing up, and rested my hand right over it. I let my flames boil out and flow over the glass like a stream. The small bits of moss that had rooted themselves in the stone's cracks were incinerated by the indigo fire. When I picked up the artifact again, the leaves were slightly less green, slightly more violet. "Huh. It absorbed some of the energy."

Verthelion looked over. "Did it?"

"Yes, it -" The disk glowed and let out some twilight flame. When it stopped, the leaves were their original bright green again. "Oh. Never mind. Puzzling, but I can deal with it tomorrow." I gently placed the disk to the side and let my illusion fade. I laid down next to Verthelion, stretching my front legs out like he did. I hadn't mentioned it while we were flying, but it was great to be with him again, not just because I loved him, but also because it was nice being with my own kind again. Amanthe was my best friend, she always would be, but still...

"So, what was Mount Hyjal like?"

Verthelion sighed, looking down. "It... wasn't the best. So many of us died. Sethria, Desperiona, and then there was me thinking _you_ were dead..." His claws clenched the stone, prompting me to raise my wing and drape it over him.

"Did anything interesting happen there?"

He laughed lightly. "You could say that. We - I mean, Deathwing almost won. The flames got pretty high up the mountain, halfway I think, and the forces themselves were knocking on the World Tree's doorstep."

"What happened?"

"What happened? The so-called Kingslayers arrived. They pushed the armies back so fast it was unbelievable. One of them almost killed me."

"Wait, what about the fires?"

"I'm getting to that! Apparently those mortals revived the ancients and persuaded one of them to push the fires back. So they bolstered the Green's forces and, well, I believe you found me atop Sulfuron Keep, right?"

I shivered from the memories of Verthelion dying the first time. "That's right. But that couldn't have taken more than a few days. Tell me everything prior."

"Well, I was put into a group lead by an Asphyxion." My throat clenched. The same dragon that had wished to take vengeance on Ellemayne. Small world. Verthelion continued regardless of my thoughts. "It's funny, really. You know how we were among the strongest in our patrol."

"Why else would we have had our aging accelerated?" I laid the club of my tail over his.

"As I was saying, the others in my group were _pathetic_. Really. As old as I was, some even older, and I was among the strongest, along with some of the others from our patrol that were transferred. Remember Pallasion?" He twisted his tail around mine, laying his club over mine.

"Pallasion? Wasn't he the one who always complained about why the patrol had to be air-borne?" I remembered him. Pallasion had always done his patrol with his eyes closed. As such he frequently collided into others, earning him a... reputation. Nobody _dared_ challenge him on the ground, though. He had his aging accelerated quite a while ago. If I hadn't horribly lost track of time somewhere on the path, he would be an adult by now.

"Yep, him. Honestly, who would have thought that a drake could be _afraid_ of heights?"

"He's still a good fighter."

"Yeah. But I'm straying from the topic. We did strafing runs on the - " His throat muscles clenched , now that he knew that the actions were evil. " - mortal defenders. Except Pallasion, of course."

"So, anything interesting happen there?"

"Nothing _compared_ to you showing up. But I would have to say the strangest thing that happened was all of us suddenly vanishing during a strafing run and appearing in the cultist camps!"

I blinked. "_What?_"

"I don't know either! Nobody knew who did that, and none of the cultists did that. Nobody could have known where we were AND where the camps were. We were there, and then we weren't. We kept moving with the same speed, too. Of course, we eventually found an infiltrator in the cultist camps, hiding in one of their outhouses. A powerful mage. "

"That... is just amazing." I noticed a nick on Verthelion's neck that wasn't there before. "Huh. That's a new scar. Hyjal's quite violent, isn't it?"

"It is. The kaldorei have _amazing_ aim with their glaives. But that one was actually because of someone in my group."

"Really? What was the fight about?" I asked, intrigued.

He winced and swallowed, as if saying the words were hard. "They... mentioned you."

I nuzzled him comfortingly. "I'm alive now, you know."

"Yeah, I know." He pushed his head back against mine. For a while we just sat there, happy to be in each other's company for the first time in months. Then he noticed the thinned webbing on my right wing. "How did you get that?"

I looked over at the scar. "Oh, you can thank Lirastrasza for that."

"She's a terror."

"What happened to her, anyway?"

"She got away. We couldn't fight her off, and eventually she lost our scents. So she flew back to the Vermillion retreat." So Lirastrasza survived.

I looked out at the night sky, mostly visible through our height. Stars littered across the sky, and the Blue Child and White Lady were practically right next to each other, the disks almost touching. Just above the trees was the largest collection of stars, forming a brilliant pathway across the sky with black spots looking like dust. The glowing center shone a dull red. The pathway of stars was known to us as the Circlet of the Titans. If I looked closely through through the thick stars, I could see a small, faintly glowing object. To the mortals it looked like a star, but I knew better. It was something glowing brightly in its center, and looked almost disk shaped, pointed slightly off with clouds of glowing fluff around the shining core. Looking up into the vast expanses of the night sky I could see another such object, but it glowed much more brightly, and even the mortals knew of the 'aura' around it. The one farther we called the Crucible of Sargeras, and the brighter one went simply as the Violet Lady among both mortals and dragons, for the faint color of its aura.

As I watched, one of the stars in the corner of my eye caught my attention. It was a small, unassuming star stranded in the middle of the night. It was faintly reddish, but nothing special about it in the least; There were plenty of other reddish stars. The star slowly started to glow brightly. "Verthelion, look at that. That star's getting brighter."

He swung his head over to look, finding it after several moments. "What... how is it..."

"I don't know." Over the course of several minutes the star grew brighter until it was about three times larger than any other singular star in the sky, and its light could hold a candle against one of the moons. We both waited with baited breath for it to fade, but it didn't. The brightness of the star remained, and it notably increased the sky's lighting, obscuring several other, fainter stars. The looming star shone there for a while. It wasn't like the light from it was as large as the White Lady or even the Blue Child, but it was definitely noticeable. There wasn't any sound with it, either. Just a silent increasing of brightness.

I shook myself out of my mesmerized gaze at the star. "What do you think it means?" I should have known what it meant. When I was placed in a temporal rift and saw all of reality, I had seen an infinite number of these events for certain, but now what they were escaped me.

"I don't know. It can't mean anything good, though. We should probably start sleeping. I think we'll reach Lor'danel tomorrow, and we should get there as soon as possible to avoid any omen from that star."

"Good idea." I flew down the cave and emerged into the darkness of the room. I laid down on the ground and closed my eyes. Verthelion came in and laid down next to me. He may have said something after, but I was already asleep.

I woke up for the briefest of moments, still in complete darkness. Before I could move, however, my body decided to prevent that by freezing itself. I felt a massive weight on my back. Colors slowly blended into the world around me. A streak of blue. A flash of red. An orb of green. They began to take more intricate shapes. Slowly they formed an environment around me, and my body came back under my control, the choking weight fading.

I was underwater, with an entire ocean overhead. The light from above was dimmed to a dark blue that camouflaged me perfectly. I was in a night elven city, deep under the sea. Thin layers of crystallized salt had grown on the walls, obscuring any painted details. I walked forward through the ocean, my movements slowed. I neared a wall and, without thinking, walked through it, yes through it. I walked into the wall like it weren't there and emerged in what could only be described as a prison.

The room was enormous, and completely flooded with water that had leaked down from the ocean above over the centuries, leaving not even the smallest air pocket. The floor was made of thick stones, but there were several cracks in it, out of which emerged spiked tentacles like I had seen in the Bastion of Twilight, but these were alive, swinging around through the water. Chains were connected onto the walls, enormous chains easily as long as Deathwing himself, made of astral energy. Their other ends dove under the ground. The entire place was encased in stone, giving it a feeling of claustrophobia. A new tentacle broke out, triggering a flash of blue energy from the chains. The blast sailed through the water and struck it, forcing the tentacle to retract under the ground. A voice resonated within my mind.

_What are you doing, drake? You know that the mortals are evil, the red flight corrupt. Why do you plan on aiding them._ I growled at the Old God. My voice underwater was deeper and resonated off the walls. "You and I both know that that is a lie!"

_Oh, is it?_ The voice of the Old God was less patient than before. Before it had always been relaxed, even amused at times. But that patience was starting to wear, I could clearly hear it. _The mortals brought the Legion to Azeroth through their use of magic. The mortals created the plague of undeath, war, slavery, arcane corruption. The red flight has not helped the other flights-_

I cut off the God. "Because it wasn't their charge, just like it wasn't the Green's charge to help the Bronze with the Infinite! You present weak facts," I snapped at it. "The Legion would have attacked Azeroth sooner or later regardless of the mortals and their magic. The demons were the ones who created the plague of undeath, and war and slavery are NOT solely mortal activities, as Deathwing has shown. Arcane corruption exists, yes, but that is the reason the blues watch over magic - "

_And what a fine job they've been doing. _This time it was my turn to be cut off. _So you've called me on my bluff. _It's voice became angry._ Foolish little drake. You fail to see the bigger picture. The mortals should not exist. You dragons should not exist. This world was ours, and soon it will be once again. The Titans stole it from us. We existed just as long as them. We ruled this world for millions of years, hundreds of millions. The pathetic Titans have only held this world for a hundred thousand. It is us who know the inner workings of the planet. It is us who know the functions which keep it moving. We know the power of the elements more than anyone else. This is our world. You are nothing more than parasites on the host. It is you who took our world._

"It doesn't matter if it was your world, you Old Gods were, still are, evil. You made the world chaotic. You can not justify that!"

The Old God actually seemed to _huff_ in annoyance. _Spoken the way a Titan would. I see dreams are not good for your personality. Interesting. You say we can not defend ruling the world with chaos. But we can. Entropy is the final order of the cosmos. Nothing lasts forever. All falls to chaos in the end. The Titans seek to create order out of the primordial chaos, but they know little of the nature of entropy, of chaos, as opposed to us. Any order they create is rebuked by millions times more chaos elsewhere simply because they created order. Creating order, in effect, accelerates the march of chaos. The Titans' mission of order will only accelerate the universe's degeneration. Simply leaving worlds to natural chaos will prolong the longevity of existence._

I hesitated. If that was true, then that was hard to argue with.

_If that was true!_ This was an Old God I was talking about. "You pretend to have the world's best interests in mind, but you and I both know that you simply revel in chaos for the sake of it." A pressing dark cloud entered my dreams. I felt a pressure on my head.

_I have tried to persuade you. Little weakling. If you do not bow to your superiors, I will simply have to bend your knee. You will not stop Deathwing. All will be undone. You are weak._

_You are nothing._

_Verthelion is nothing. He seeks to change this by gathering power. He will betray you. He already _has_ betrayed you. Take your vengeance on him._ The dream shifted, lines blurring into each other. If I looked closely I could still see details, but those soon faded into the absolute darkness of the cavern Verthelion and I slept in. The Old God's voice continued to ring in my mind.

_It _was_ your fault. He blames you for it._

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. <strong>**I'm curious to see if anyone can get what the Circlet of the Titans, Crucible of Sargeras and Violet Lady are. They are _quite_ heavily based on real life objects.**_  
><em>


	27. Chapter 27:Resting

**I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**'Ragnaros walks over to computer and sits down'**

**"Hmm, patch 4.3 notes. What do we have here?"**

**"Wait what? Deathwing raid? ALREADY?" 'Pulls out Sulfuras' "TOO SOON!" 'Smashes computer'.**

**^ First thing that went through my mind when I saw the Deathwing raid's coming out. I don't know if I'll finish the story by then, but I do not plan on changing ANYTHING because of what Blizzard does, not where Deathwing is, the fight details, or the lore outcomes. I am staying independent.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I spent the rest of the night in a dreamless sleep, thank the Titans. When I woke up again it was still dark, but my internal clock told me it was morning. I felt pressure around my head; the Old God's continued attempts to wear me down. The air was sharp and cold, and I was tired beyond belief. I shifted around, but Verthelion wasn't where he was. Where had he gone? I got up and, with effort, flew out of the cave to find him sitting at the mouth in mortal form, back tensed, hands reaching around his front to try and warm himself.. The sun rose over the horizon, causing Azeroth's shadow to retreat below the opposite end of the sky. The star that had suddenly brightened during the night was hidden behind cloud cover, shattered pieces of the storm that had formed during the night from the instabilities of Deathwing's destruction. A thick layer of snow blanketed the ground for as far as I could see. Some of the snowflakes on the treetops reflected the sunrise, giving the forest a sickly 'on fire' look. He looked straight out at the red skies, shoulders pulled in together tightly.<p>

_He is nervous you will discover his plan to kill you._ I hissed a _shut up_ at the Old God. "You're awake."

He turned his head back to look at me. "Yes, I am," he whispered, sounding afraid. "Do you... do you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"The Old God. I had a dream last night. It's been whispering to me more in the past hour than it has in the last year."

So I wasn't the only one the Old God was trying to stop.

"You and me both. We'll just have to brave the whispers, help each other, and no matter what, remember that the Old God _lies._"

"We do. But it's going to be hard."

I sat down next to him, retracted to a blood/high elf form in a heartbeat, before deciding to pick a human form, albeit different from my usual one, with different colored hair and a longer chin. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Definitely. But we don't have a choice. We'll get through this together."

"Yeah. We should get going. We can rest at Lor'danel." Verthelion stood up, shivering slightly from the cold. How long had he been out here in the sub-zero temperatures?

I shifted the illusory magic around me, turning my robes into a thick fur coat. "You should change your clothing. It's cold even for mortals right now."

He nodded. "Right." Slowly, the violet robes that adorned his human form lost color. They grew thicker slowly, and soon he too was protected from the cold. "How's this?"

I nodded approvingly. "Let's go." I picked up the artifact from the ground and held it in my hand. I was momentarily alarmed that I had let it stay outside in plain sight, but I quickly pushed that thought to the back of my mind. The leaves under the glass dome were still a vibrant green, oblivious to the cold outside. I concentrated and launched a flurry of twilight blasts into it from point blank range. The leaves changed their hue to indigo, and some even started to smolder, but then the flame seeped back out, the leaves healing as if nothing had happened. I decided to let it be. The fireballs had drained me, and I was not eager to see if I could, in fact, remove the nature magic from it by placing all my power into it. I ran down after Verthelion, who had since walked down the hill and traversed on.

He looked my way when I caught up with him. The effort of catching up with him had increased my heat under the fur coat and the biting cold that reached for my face created an unusual juxtaposition where my face sweated, but was still cold. "Does that artifact do _anything_ useful?" he asked, looking sideways at the artifact.

"I'm getting close to a breakthrough. I'm sure of it." I got an idea. I gave Verthelion the artifact. "Turn it over and launch a fireball into the brass portion. I think I'm on to something." He fixed me with a look that clearly meant I've lost my mind -

_He truly thinks that. He hates you._ Oh for the love of - never mind. He did as I told him and launch a small fireball into the artifact's metal. The result was stunning.

A conical blast of bright green energy shot forward out of the glass, the magical visages of leaves fading momentarily. Any tree within the blast's ten meter length was cleared of snow and had its leaves filled with life. Verthelion turned the artifact over, and I saw that the green leaves it bore were faded almost to the point of being completely gray, but were slowly regaining color, tiny green filaments extending into the air to suck the latent life energy out of the air, and out of Verthelion. I snatched the artifact from his hands out of fear, but when the artifact began to drain me, I didn't feel any different. I could only say one thing. "Whoa."

"Indeed! That thing is - hey, are you sure you want it sucking your life out of you?"

"It can't be draining anything appreciable, I can't feel it at all."

"Hmm. Okay then. Now that we know how to use it somewhat, let's keep moving." Verthelion continued north, unsteady on his feet. I kept the artifact in my hands, the natural warmth slowly returning to it as it recharged its energies from nearby life. We walked next to a river, which had several ice floes on it from the veritable flash-freeze. We briefly returned to our true forms to drink from it, then back to our mortal forms before the cold could make us too drowsy. In this manner we very slowly headed north. At around noon, the clouds had completely dissipated, lacking warm air to sustain themselves. I could see the star that had illuminated itself in the sky. The sun's rays nearly hid it, but without a doubt, it was there. By then, the artifact's leaves had returned to their original shade and it had stopped siphoning energy out of me, not that I had noticed. I kept turning it over in my hand, flipping it like a coin. I knew how to use it, at least to a certain extent. That knowledge brought a sort of peace to me.

My stomach growled, and I held up a hand for Verthelion to stop, him following behind me. "We should hunt."

"Hmm. Yes, we should. But how are we going to find anything in this cold?"

I froze. How indeed! All the bears would be in their dens, and all the other animals in their respective homes. I held the artifact to my eyes, and got an idea. It was a long shot, but better than eating fruit, which while I would enjoy in a mortal form, I wasn't exactly looking forward to. I pointed it at Verthelion. Launching a fireball into it had depleted nearly all of its energy. A small spark should do less. He noticed what I was doing. "Um, Selriona? Shouldn't you point that somewhere else, as in, not at me?" I placed a finger on the metal and briefly ignited the tip. A narrow beam of green light fired into Verthelion, knocking him back a good five meters, having him land on his back with a _crunch_ from the snow that made my skin crawl. In a heartbeat I forgot about the artifact and leaned over him. Oh Titans what if I really hurt him? He groaned and opened his eyes. "Ugh. Don't do that again."

"How do you feel? Are you okay?"

"Well, I'm not hungry anymore. That's a good thing, and I'm not hurt, not dangerously anyhow. But I don't think that I'm actually fed, just that it's delayed for now."

"Interesting." I held out a hand and pulled him up, with him also trying. Of course, this just meant both our feet became buried in the snow. I easily stepped out, but Verthelion floundered for a minute before succeeding. I held up the artifact to my face. The leaves were still green, but not as bright, and already it sucked life out of the air nearby to replenish its energy. Large fireball, conical blast of restorative nature energy. Small spark, narrow beam. I fired the artifact at myself, flying backward... into a tree.

_He has allowed you to experience pain. He doesn't care about you. Leave him to rot._ I wasn't able to reply through the haze surrounding my mind. I moaned, clutching my head. Why was the world spinning? Somebody held my hands and tried to pull me up. I shook my head, ignoring the throbbing pains in the back of it. The world split into two and then joined back into one. My head hurt horribly, and I felt like I was looking at the world through a heavy fog.

I doubled over and regurgitated.

When I was done, I was still hunched over, one of Verthelion's arms holding me at my stomach. The world shifted too and fro so fast I couldn't tell which side he was on. At least I wasn't hungry any longer.

"Selriona? Are you alright?"

I groaned. "Concussion. I just need to lie down." I crawled down and laid on my back with the snow under me, my coat protecting me from the brunt of the cold.

"Did it work? The artifact, I mean."

"Yeah. No hungry anymore."

"No hungry?"

"I mean, not hungry." I tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea kept me down.

"Come on, stand up. We need to keep going." I moaned in agony but obeyed him, swaying on my feet precariously. Light burned my eyes. I scrambled for the artifact, picking it up in a shaking hand; the leaves were gray, but not as much as the first time Verthelion used it. "Can you walk?"

"Ugh. I think so. Let's keep going." If it had been my first time in a mortal form, I never would have been able to move. I took slow steps forward, Verthelion supporting me when I stumbled. Slowly my coordination came back, and I could move properly. My head still throbbed, however. As luck would have it, another hour of walking later, we came upon a blood/high elven female. In retrospect, she was a high elf, with light blue, glowing eyes. She had reddish hair like Mariel did, and wore a similar fur coat to the one I did, but instead of dull colors, hers were a bright red, matching her hair. I saw Verthelion tense when she saw us.

"You two! What are you doing out here in the cold?" I froze when I heard her voice. It sounded disturbingly familiar.

"I could ask you the same thing," retorted Verthelion.

She nodded. "Touché. Anyway, I was out gathering food for the people at Lor'danel. Need to get the fruit quickly before it freezes over completely." She held up a deep basket filled with fruit, covered in ice from the snow that had melted when she picked them, and promptly froze again. Snowplums, northern frostberries, and several others I couldn't identify. "But still, what are you doing here? I haven't seen you in the village."

I pulled my mind together long enough to talk. "No, we were going there, actually. We're going to Stormwind, and we were hoping to catch the boat at Teldrassil."

"Hmm. Well, I could escort you to Lor'danel. No sense in leaving anyone out here to die. Come on, follow me."

I stumbled as I attempted to walk. "Exactly how far away are we from Lor'danel?"

"At this pace, a day." Verthelion groaned besides me. I knew why; he had planned to get there today, but with flying in this cold weather out of the question...

"How did you get all the way out here alone, then?" I asked.

"I can take care of myself _very_ well." She eyed me curiously. "Are you alright? You look pale."

"Oh. Yeah, I had a concussion not too long ago."

"I know some healing magic. Let me get that." She waved her hand over my head, and my eyes fluttered for a moment. My headache was gone. "Head injuries can't actually be healed with magic, not effectively. The most I could do was relieve the symptoms. You'll still need a few days to heal, but at least you won't feel like a kodo stepped on you until then."

I smiled warmly at her. "Thank you. Should we be going, then?"

"Yes, let's get going!" Verthelion burst out in a panicked voice. Both of us snapped our heads around to him.

Slowly, the elf nodded. "Alright then. Follow me, I know the way." She started to walk north, and Verthelion trailed far behind, almost out of sight from her. I fell in besides him.

"What's wrong? You're nervous."

He whispered to me in a tone barely audible. "Can't you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

He deadpanned. After a few moments, he nodded. "Turn on your senses." For a few moments I didn't understand what he was saying, but then I got it.

_Alright, let me feel the red flight._ I hadn't even noticed I wasn't able to sense the red flight after I shut that sense off at the Vermillion retreat what seemed like a lifetime ago. The moment I thought that, I felt a pulsing in front of me, notably intense. My throat muscles clenched. The elf was a red! An adult at that. So that was how she was able to heal me so easily. I knew that I wouldn't-

_The red flight is corrupt. They did not lift a finger against the Scourge. They allowed mortals to do all the hard work. _No they didn't. Remember the events at the Wrathgate? Besides, the Reds was busy dealing with the Nexus war! I sighed and continued whispering so that the red wouldn't hear us. "The Old God whispered to me again. So what should we do?"

"Well, she's a red, and you know that they're corr-" He cut himself off.

"You were saying?"

"Just, lay low. Don't let her find out who we really are."

I nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

We kept walking after the red for a few tense hours, when she stopped. The river flowed down in a waterfall, kicking up a large cloud of mist and creating a whirlpool at the bottom. Some of the water flowed out, but most of it went down. "We should stop here and eat. While we're at it, I suppose introductions are in order." She looked at the whirlpool for a long time before continuing. "My name's Kali. You?"

I thought of a different came for myself. "I'm Seluria, and this is Verthelo." I made up a mortal name for him quickly, earning me a hostile glance. _You will be alone. He hates you_. Oh, shut up.

'Kali' nodded. "Alright." She knelt down on the snow and pulled a plum out and tossed it to me, and a few frostberries to Verthelion. I bit into it, and Verthelion eyed his fruit uncertainly. I nodded to him reassuringly, and he bit into it cautiously, then, realizing it wasn't as disgusting as it looked, began to devour it. Kali herself also ate some odd fruit I couldn't identify, small violet berries, but at the same time they seemed to be unnatural. Perhaps it was a food from the Outlands brought back from expeditions there? It was unlikely such fruit could handle living in Darkshore, but not impossible. We sat there for a while, eating. The magic from the artifact was wearing off, so fortunately the apple staved off hunger, at least for the moment.

I decided to make conversation in to try to prevent Kali from getting suspicious of us. "So, what's Lor'danel like?"

"It's nice and scenic. The water is a little dreary, but the place isn't called Darkshore for nothing. The kaldorei of course are in dire straights, and need all the help they can get to fend off the Twilight's Hammer. They're going for a brutal strategy, stripping the trees nearby of anything even remotely edible. It's why I had to come all the way out here." She looked at me and Verthelion. "I hope you two can fight. I can almost promise you that if you stay for more than a day you will need to be able to."

"Have any of the Twilight flight attacked Lor'danel?" asked Verthelion.

"Luckily, no, and they don't seem to intent to." I breathed a sigh of relief. If I had to fight one of my kin... that would have been a nightmare. Kali misinterpreted my expression. "I feel the same way. They are ruthless, and - " She choked on her words and cut off her sentence, standing up. I flinched when she said 'ruthless', but fortunately she didn't seem to notice. "Come on. Time's wasting." She suddenly seemed eager to change the subject. I was still eating, as was Verthelion, but it didn't matter. We could eat while walking... well, I could. I didn't know about him. I looked over at him. He seemed to be managing.

The forests of Darkshore were just that: dark. As the sun started to head down, I found it harder and harder to keep up with Kali, the glare of the snow from earlier causing flashes of color as they adjusted to new levels of light, a rather uncomfortable process that left me half blind at times and in a fair amount of pain. I wondered what we would do with the red. I nearly smacked myself for being so stupid: nothing! We would just go to Lor'danel, then Teldrassil, Stormwind, easy.

Then why did I have a feeling the journey would be anything but?

Kali stopped, dead silent. "Hear that?" I tried to listen. Nothing. I responded as such. "Cultists. I'll handle this. You stay here." Her face started to redden in anger.

Verthelion looked at me nervously, then back to Kali, and nodded. "Alright. Are you sure?"

"Positive." She stormed off into the woods. Using the pulsing, I soon judged that she was far enough away, I turned to talk to Verthelion.

"Alright, what is with the Old God? Why is it whispering to us _now_? Now, of all times?"

"I don't know. This goes without saying, but maybe it _doesn't_ want us to betray it?"

I rubbed my chin. "That can't be it. I heard practically nothing from it during my stay in Stormwind."

"It didn't think you were a threat then, I guess." A roar sounded from the distance, along with the sound of flame flowing through the air and... a man screaming in pain. The noise was so faint that, if I had been a regular mortal, I wouldn't have been able to hear it.

"But then why would we be a threat _now_?" I fiddled with the artifact, spinning it over in my fingers.

"I don't know. Maybe it's because there are two of us, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts."

I nodded. "That sounds reasonable. But then, it's just two twilight drakes. How could we make a difference?"

"No. It's not two rogue drakes the Old God is worried about. It's two rogue _dragons_."

"Hmm. True. When we become adults, we can have some serious influence. But until then..."

"The Old God whispers take time to drill themselves into you, especially when you know what it's doing. And Old Gods, having waited for over ten thousand years, are anything but impatient. Here she comes!"

A few moments later Kali appeared in front of us again. She had a little cut on her left shoulder, but she didn't seem to notice, since it wasn't healed. "I took care of the cultists. The path's safe now."

I decided to play ignorant. "How many cultists were there?"

"Oh, a few."

Verthelion caught on to what I was doing. "And you killed them all. Just like that," he said with no emotion.

Kali shrugged almost nervously, leading us forward the way she'd killed the cultists. She stepped over a fern, around which was a puddle of half-melted snow. "I know a little fire magic, yes."

We stepped into the clearing, and I pretended to be surprised. All the snow was gone. A few ashes were scattered across the ground. Several trees has the snow on them eradicated and had vines twirling around them, fresh green. "A _little_?"

Kali didn't respond, but instead picked up her pace. In no time we had left the ashes behind, and continued to follow the river, but the ground became rough and nearly mountainous, so our progress was slow, especially with the snow. She was right; there was nothing edible on the trees or on the bushes as we approached Lor'danel. A brutal tactic, but I would expect nothing less from the Twilight's hammer. By the time the sun had set and we looked around for night shelter, we were still, according to Kali, about fifteen kilometers from Lor'danel.

"We'll set up by those rocks." She pointed to a few jagged boulders sticking out of the snow, like gigantic fangs. They arched over and provided some measure of shelter. I walked over to one and sat down, fiddling with the artifact under my cloak and leaning against the granite. Kali walked over to a tree, the pulsing on my head moving and changing intensity as she did. She lowered her head, and used a narrow beam of fire to cut off several of the pine's branches. She hauled them over to the rocks and hung them over like a curtain, fusing them with the rock with intense blasts of fire that glassed the rock and caused it to flow around the branches, before solidifying in an instant, before it could ignite the bark. How hot were those blasts, that she could combine wood and stone with them?

I scoffed. "Yes, a _little_ fire magic." She didn't respond, but simply finished the shelters and went into one of her own.

Finally, she spoke. "I'll keep watch for the night. I'm a little bit of an insomniac, I can handle it." Insomniac, right. I looked at through the leaves that the Red placed at my rock, catching sight of the brightened star, still glowing ominously. Verthelion came in next to me, also leaning against the rock. I closed my eyes and relaxed my body. Without even trying, we both leaned against each other. Then I lost consciousness.

* * *

><p>This time in my dream, I was in my old cave, the two-forked one Verthelion and I slept in before I was shot down by Lirastrasza. Nalestrasza sat next to me. I glared at her. "What do <em>you<em> want, Nalestrasza?"

She looked at me, her eyes sorrowful and haunted. She shook her head. "Oh the misery. The heart-wrenching depression." She laid down, and closed her eyes. "You don't know. Of course not. How could you? You can only use such a small portion of your mind." She opened her eyes and looked at me. "But you'll find out. Yes you will. You'll learn. And then you'll weep, just like I did while you were still awake."

I didn't like the sound of that. "What in the hells are you talking about, Nalestrasza?"

She... shivered? What was wrong with her? "A near miss. A tragic coincidence. And even with all my - _your_ - brainpower, I don't know if there will ever be a second chance."

"What are you now? My adviser? What's this near miss you're talking about?"

"You'll find out soon enough. I can't tell you. But in response to your first question, I am something of an adviser now. I was only your enemy under the influence of the nightmare elixir, which forced me to be malevolent." Nalestrasza closed her eyes again, rumbling miserably in her throat, and sniffled through her nostrils. "Please, leave. I won't take a form when I'm not in your line of sight, and I need to be insubstantial for a while."

"Why can't you just tell me? If I know what the near miss will be, I can try to avoid it, make it work."

I heard a slight gurgling from Nalestrasza's crop. She looked at me with a mixture of sadness and anger. She inhaled through her nostrils, but then instead of attacking me, simply let out a small stream of fire at the ground, her anger fading. "So you say. Selriona, I am infinitely smarter than you, and even I couldn't find a way to fix it, and I'm the one who predicted it will happen, using your latent magic. If there was a way, I would have found it. No, it happens too soon. Days from now. Too little time to change anything. If it occurred months from now, there'd be time to set events in motion. If it were in weeks, it would still be possible, if only just. But days? Nothing works. The chance of success decreases exponentially the sooner the event is. It's too late."

"Is the event anything... dangerous? Threatening to me?"

Nalestrasza blinked a tear out of one eye. "No. Not in the least. But considering what it was," she looked up at me, "you'd wish that it'd be physically dangerous to you instead of what it is."

For a while I sat there. The two times I had seen her Nalestrasza had always simply reeked of confidence, but now she seemed... broken somehow. She continued. "I'll take care of the Old God for you. I'll be listening through your mind's ear, and when the Old God tries to whisper to you, I'll manipulate your thoughts so that you don't hear it. You'll still have to help Verthelion, though."

That frightened me. How did Nalestrasza have so much power over my mind?

"You can do that? I thought you weren't self aware!"

"Yes, I can, and no, I wasn't self aware. I am now though. I can also hear your thoughts, so relax. I'm not going to do anything evil, Selriona. After all, you're the consciousness. I'm simply the rest of your mind. If you die, I die. Though..." She pulled her wings in tight around her, shrinking her frame. "Knowing what's going to happen, I've almost become suicidal."

"Can we converse while I'm awake?"

I half expected her to laugh sarcastically, but she didn't. "No, no. No way to. There are limits to what I can do. Dreams are the _only_ time we can have more than a one way conversation. Now please, go. Like I said before, I need to be insubstantial right now." I nodded and started to walk away. The moment I turned away from Nalestrasza, I thought I heard her sigh in relief. Nerves on edge, I walked out of the cavern. The world outside flickered. The Bastion was still there, the cultists tents too, but their colors shifted faster than I could fathom, so that they looked almost like a smooth gray. I flew out into it, instantly lost my power to fly, and fell screaming to the ground.

But just before I hit the ground, I thought I saw a red dragon.

* * *

><p>My eyes snapped open. I had fallen asleep with my mouth open apparently, and my mouth felt like I had eaten ten snakes and never bothered to wash the taste out. I sat up, feeling Verthelion's sleeping form slide down as gravity took hold of him. I smiled in spite of myself, and then remembered Nalestrasza's conversation. Something was going to happen that was going to break my heart, according to her. I stood up and walked out of the makeshift shelter Kali had built. Said red dragon sat on the ground, looking out over the horizon. The snow had all melted from the now stifling temperatures, even after almost immediately taking off the fur coat and materializing lighter clothing underneath. I hated that heat, but Kali seemed completely comfortable, of course. She looked back when I stretched, raising my arms over my head until I felt the satisfactory <em>pop<em> that loosened my muscles.

"You're awake." She seemed to have tear streaks on her face, but any other evidence of crying was long gone.

"Yeah, I am. Should I wake up Verthelo and get moving?"

She nodded dismally. "Go. We need to get back to Lor'danel. They need my help. All the help they can get, really."

I went back without a word, and after shaking/smacking Verthelion awake(You seem to be developing a thing for head injuries, Seluria!), showing him how to change from the fur coat, and a fruit for the start of the day, we set out north. Kali said that at our current rate, we would arrive at around noon, to which Verthelion groaned. I knew why; he had expected to be there by yesterday. Our progress was slowed.

As noon approached, I found myself walking next to Kali, and decided to capitalize on the opportunity. "So, how did you end up in Lor'danel?"

"Well, like you, I'm just visiting." Her eyes dropped. "A couple years ago the Twilight's Hammer killed one of my newborn children. The other died soon after from a disease they implanted."

"My condolences." Her last brood was wiped out. How... _terrible_.

"Thank you. So anyway, it took a while for me to pull myself back together, but once I did, I decided to travel and help people out. Currently I'm in Lor'danel. Soon however, I'm going to find a place to settle down. I'm recently with child, after all."

What did mortals usually do in those situations? Oh yes. "Congratulations."

"Thank you. So, how about you? What business do you have in Stormwind?"

"Well, Verthelo and I are going to the Highlands. The Twilight Highlands, it's a scenic place."

At this, Kali exploded. "WHAT? SCENIC? Do you not know of the enormous _war_ going on there? What are you THINKING?"

"I didn't think of that. I just figured we could find a place to hide from the battles."

Kali threw her arms up in exasperation, but continued walking to Lor'danel. "Hiding from the - Good luck. You'll need it. As far as I know, it is impossible to hide from the war. If you don't go to the war, it'll come to you."

Verthelion coughed behind us. "Could you save the conversation for later? I'm not exactly feeling too good."

Kali nodded. "My apologies. Can I help you in any way?"

"No, no. It's not physical." I instantly grasped what was wrong with him. The Old God was getting to him. I hadn't noticed any whispers since waking up, apparently Nalestrasza was being loyal to her promise, though it troubled me she was able to override an Old God. Slowly I let myself fall back to Verthelion, and whispered to him so that Kali wouldn't hear us; if we were mortals, we would not have been able to whisper quietly enough, but as it were, we could communicate with softer noises without alerting the red dragon. Still, I used his mortal name. Just to be safe.

"What's wrong, Verthelo?"

"The _voice_. It's telling me how you're going to betray me for the red."

"Why would I _do_ that? I came across the world for you. I'd never do that."

Verthelion let out a breath. "Thank you. I needed that. It's just, the half-truths are the worst. Because it starts off like that, and you figure that since they are half-truths, you can believe it, and then they start lying outright, and you believe that too."

"I'm here for you. Don't think that you can't come to me with these problems."

"Good to know. And how about you? Aren't the whispers bothering you too?"

"I've... found a way around it. It's holding up perfectly so far."

He punched me on the arm. "Lucky." I started to bring up fire for a light blast, but kept in mind that Kali might smell the twilight fire and, being an adult, it would be over.

"You are _so_ lucky there is a red here," I hissed at him, earning only a self-satisfied chuckle from him.

The rest of our journey went in silence and with no event. The woods of Darkshore passed by us swiftly, the mountainous region being behind us. The river tumbled across rapids, and we had to be careful to drink from it. Luckily the extreme turbulence meant there was virtually no disease in it, since our mortal forms couldn't handle infection nearly as effectively. Once or twice I caught an animal fleeing from us, Kali's scent being clearly that of a dragon. Soon enough, the forest cleared to reveal a stone road and a wooden bridge. The road was crumbled, some of the stones cracked and pulverized as if someone had taken a hammer to them. The bridge went over the turbulent river, and the splashes reached so high up we were soaked by the time we got across. Indeed, the bridge itself was so wet it was a miracle - or magic - that it didn't collapse into the river under its own weight. But, just as Kali had said, we reached Lor'danel by noon.

Some patches of grass were a bright green, a stark contrast to the near-dead grass in the main of Darkshore which had been pummeled by the wild weather swings. The night elf sentinels reached for their throwing glaives when they saw us, but relaxed when they noticed Kali was leading us. Said red dragon curtseyed to one on the second bridge, which was much, _much_ longer. Other sentinels patrolled on it. Passing that with Kali keeping the sentinels from attacking, or at the very least questioning us, I felt like I was in some special mortal 'club'. Finally, she stopped in the center of Lor'danel. All the grass here was green from the druids that, when not defending from the cult, were healing the earth. One of the more massive buildings had a violet roof, with a window looking over us near the top. I thought I saw somebody standing there looking out at us. To my immediate right was a several meter wide elevation of rock, filled with a glowing blue water that seemed to drip with nature energy; a moonwell. Other, smaller buildings dotted the area, clearly the residential places for some of the people who kept the place running, but compared to the number of mortals I smelled, there were very few places to live in. Not surprising, seeing as how Lor'danel was built practically on the fly after Auberdine was annihilated.

Verthelion tensed, and I knew why. He was around more non-cultist mortals than he probably had ever been. I remember how I felt like that when I first utilized a mortal form. Kali stopped near the largest of the buildings and sighed.

"Welcome to Lor'danel - "

"And please, give whatever help you can." We looked up at the new voice. A female night elf walked down, eying us. She wore white robes with blue jewelry and green bindings on her elbows. Her hair was blue, with glowing silver eyes and blue tattoos of leaves underneath them.

Kali curtseyed to her. "Dentaria."

"You know there's no need for that. You've brought two more refugees here, I see. I'll have Kyteran try to find a place for them to rest. We can't let anyone stay out there." She sighed, the tone making it clear she wasn't just tired; she was completely at her wits end. How many hells had Lor'danel gone through trying to save as many people as possible?

"I understand. They're not staying, though. They said that they are going to Stormwind."

Dentaria nodded. "Ah yes. The boat from Rut'theran to there is three days off, and Teldira recently sent someone there with her hippogryph, so it's likely to be a short time. Meanwhile they can stay here, help out." She eyed us again, but there was nothing cold, harsh or calculating in her look. If anything she was looking at us to see how best she could make our stay as comfortable as she could given the circumstances. "Kali, can you deliver the fruit to Ayriala? The two of you, follow me. Kyteran will help you. I have wounded to tend to." Kali walked away without response, and Dentaria led us over to the large violet building, and I saw for the first time the scope of the situation. Makeshift beds made of branches woven together littered the floor.

"Where is everyone?"

Dentaria pressed her lips together. "In all honesty, I do not know." She shook her head, and then apparently remembered. "Ah, yes, they are making preparations for survival no doubt. Helping our healers." Dentaria stepped with great agility between the beds up to a counter. The woman behind it was a mess, turquoise hair sticking in all directions, reddish green clothing a mess.

"Dentaria. Greetings. Who are these two?"

Verthelion, being too scared from all the mortals surrounding us, remained silent. "I'm Seluria, this is Verthelo. We're going to Stormwind."

She didn't mention it, but the woman, likely Kyteran, was obviously relieved we wouldn't be staying long; resources were clearly being strained as it were. "A pleasure to meet you. I am Kyteran. How may I help you?"

"Well, we just need a place to rest and then go to Rut'theran for the boat. " I answered.

She nodded gratefully. "All right. I'll get to work on finding an empty place for you to rest. In the meantime, feel free to wander about. Calestrasza may have something for you to do, she's - "

Verthelion, mustering his courage, cut her off. "Wait, who?"

"Oh, pardon me. I forgot you're new here. Calestrasza is a red dragon. She came here a few weeks ago and has been aiding us. She recently returned from gathering food - "

"She wouldn't happen to go by the name Kali in her mortal form, would she?"

That time it was I who interrupted her. She grimaced slightly, evidently irritated with us stopping her. "Yes, she would. You're taking this well, have you met her?"

"Yes, actually." I clenched my fists, pretending to be angry about just finding out. "She didn't tell us. She escorted us here."

Kyteran nodded. "That would explain it. Calestrasza doesn't tell anybody initially, as it leads to some... false expectations. Do not be angry with her. The Red dragonflight is our ally against the Twilight." My heart twisted at that, even though she probably meant the cultists. She eyed the artifact I had taken out and began flipping in my hand. When had I done _that? _"Where did you get that?"

"Oh, this? Um, my mother gave it to me. Where she got it - " I shrugged, trying to make the lie as convincing as I could.

"Go to the infirmary. Right now. Help the injured. It's outside, third building on the left," she said with alarming suddenness in her voice.

"Okay. Come on Verthelo. We should get going."

"Yes, we should, go _outside_." The way he said outside made it very clear to me that he really wanted to be away from the mortals. We obeyed the instructions however, walked along the roads and kept the Calestrasza's location known through our sensing, and soon found ourselves in what could only have been the infirmary. Sentinels were laying on beds, some makeshift, some actual night elven beds, finely constructed. I could see that they weren't doing well, but even so, Verthelion tensed from being around so many mortals. The violet skin of several was faded, pale. Dentaria walked around, treating the injuries of some, as were several others who I assumed were priestesses. I took the artifact into my hand and ran a finger over the glass dome, the nature energies still flowing along the leaves inside it. I took a deep breath and turned it over, pointing it at the injured.

If I used a fireball to activate it, would Calestrasza notice us? Then again, why hadn't she noticed us before? Only the twilight flight could sense other flights, it was a trait linked to our origins. My parents had been red, so I could sense the red flight. Verthelion had to have at least one parent who could do the same, as the sensing of the red flight dominated the sensing of other flights. But Calestrasza should have been able to smell the twilight energies on us. Unless...

Yes, of course! When I used the artifact on Verthelion and I, the nature energies would have masked our twilight energy, canceling out and making us unnoticeable to Calestrasza. So using it should conceal the scent of twilight energy... provided nobody saw the fireball in the first place. Alright, that's not too hard. Just place my hand on the metal, so that nobody can see it. Wrap my other hand around it just in case.

I launched the fireball into it, and a conical blast of green energy exploded out, washing over the injured. The night elves that were pale had color return to their skin, and all of them seemed healthier. Dentaria looked up and walked to me. "How did you do that? What are you doing here?"

"Kyteran told me to come here and use this," I held up the artifact, the leaves now a dull gray, tendrils of green light siphoning inconsequential energy from all nearby life.

Beside me, Verthelion nodded. "She did." His voice took on a somewhat hostile tone. "Is there a problem?"

"Oh, no, no problem. Just Kali - "

"Calestrasza?" I asked.

"Oh. Kyteran told you. Yes, she's going to find nothing to do here." She looked back at the sentinels, most of whom were still injured despite the blast of nature magic. "On second thought, that might not be true. May I see that? The good we could do with it - " She started to reach for it, but I pulled it back. Beside me, Verthelion scoffed. "I know that you're reluctant to lose it, but - " She made another reach for it, but I just snapped it away and - hissed?

"Seluria, are you honestly that attached to it? Even after the length of time you've held it?" The true meaning behind my mate's words was evident; I only had the artifact for two, maybe three days, and already I was hissing when somebody asked to have it. I held it off, looking at the gray leaves, slowly recharging, mesmerized.

"Sorry, but it's really important to me. I can come back later though."

She nodded. "That is sufficient. You have my thanks. There isn't much to do around here, though. If you can help, please, do so. Other than that, though..."

I nodded. "I understand. Thank you." For not taking away the artifact. Before I could do anything else, Verthelion grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me out of the infirmary. He led me across Lor'danel to a grove until nobody was near, and from my sensing I could feel Calestrasza was well out of hearing range if we whispered.

"What the hells is wrong with you? You've only had the artifact for a few days and you're _hissing_ when someone tries to take it away? I mean, fair enough, they shouldn't try to take it away, but that's a rather strong reaction!"

"I know, I know. But there's just, something about it's magic."

"Well, I don't trust it! A mortal gave it to you. Who's to say it wasn't some, some ward against our flight? That it makes you insane?"

"You're being paranoid again!" I snapped at him. His hands started smoking lightly, then he calmed down. "There is NOTHING wrong with me. I'm just interested about the artifact and how I can use it to it's full potential. Now, come on. I've got a lot to teach you about mortal culture. Help you blend in."

We spent the rest of the day in the same grove, the green plant life around us being a sharp contrast to the darkness of the woods outside. I taught Verthelion about human culture, since that was really all I knew. Table manners, topics of idle conversation, holidays (Which he, just like I had, almost refused to believe mortals would do something of the sort.), and the history I had learned trying to get around the bronze dragon, who of course I didn't know was trying to _protect_ me. It was actually a little surprising how much he didn't know, or should I say, how much I learned from Amanthe and Samuel. Amanthe... no, she wasn't dead. Only her future self was. For all intents and purposes, she hadn't died. By the time I had gotten through it all, the sun began to set, and more than once I had to assure a passing sentinel we weren't lost, or invaders. The moment the sun vanished below the horizon, we decided to call it a day and return to Kyteran, who probably had a spot for us to sleep, and do just that. First, however, I stopped by the infirmary as Verthelion went on. Much to my displeasure, Calestrasza was there.

She looked up when I entered. "Oh. Seluria, hello."

Time to pretend to be angry! "You didn't tell us."

"Tell you - oh. My apologies. But I had reason."

"Pray, tell."

"If I had told you, well, my experiences with mortals have led me to the conclusion that you would have asked me to fly you to Lor'danel." Hardly! "It was much simpler to lead you here on the assumption I was mortal as you are - " What a laugh. " - and reveal the truth to you here. I would have told you sooner, but we were separated."

"By Dentaria. Who is she to you?"

"She is one of the priestesses of Elune here. I respect her leadership."

I blinked in surprise. "Oh. That explains a lot."

"But I digress. Why did you come here? Certainly it wasn't to question me."

"No, it wasn't." I took out the artifact and, making sure that nobody would be able to see the slightest spark of twilight fire, launched a fireball into it and healed the injured. Calestrasza took the blast, and despite it doing no harm, the natural energies would prevent her from detecting the scent of twilight magic. "Well, I'm done here. I'm going to sleep."

Calestrasza nodded. "Good idea. I'm going to do so as well."

For a moment I considered asking her why under the pretense that mortals thought dragons hardly needed any sleep compared to them (Which was true) but I decided to let it slide. In fact, a mature dragon needed almost no sleep, one hour a day, but they could go a week without before they would feel any effect, and the required sleep adds up.

I walked out of the infirmary to the 'inn', where Kyteran had spoken to us. All the beds were filled, sleeping night elves, some only pretending to sleep from the rate of their heartbeats, some dreaming from the faint flicker of their eyes. Verthelion was already asleep, and there was an empty spot next to him. I laid down and closed my eyes, drifting to sleep within moments. I didn't meet Nalestrasza in my dreams that night. In fact, I didn't see her at all for the next few nights, even when I called for her in my dreams.

Why was she so disturbed? What was she hiding from?

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. Oh man, this chapter marks me reaching 200k words posted. God, it doesn't feel like that much.<br>**

**Oh man, this chapter was so frustrating, but at last it's done. I'd like to thank again everyone who read, and the people who reviewed; Ori Whitedeer, Septoth, IXthy, KennHyrulian, wanda von dunayev, DarkVynAngel, 11SnowLeopard11, nightdragon0, Belladelias, Tich, Keelosprower15, xXMadCatXx, Diloph, Apocalypse Survivor, lisethshade14 the anonymous reviewers Loki, Lovmp, Umbraz, mrumbraz(Who I am assuming is the same person as Umbraz), and Dude.**

**Special thanks to Mlaia3 for continously reviewing every chapter I put out, and to Dusty the Umbravita for betaing this. Seriously, without all you people this story would never have gotten past chapter 5.**


	28. Chapter 28:Failure

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Grr I keep forgetting these things! In chapter 26 I mentioned the names of 2 galaxies visible from Azeroth and the name of their version of the Milky Way and said they were tied heavily to real life objects, and I forgot to elaborate the next chapter. Anyway, the Circlet of the Titans(Their version of the Milky Way) is Andromeda, the Violet Lady(Closer galaxy) is Triangulum, and the Crucible of Sargeras(Farthest object they can see) is the Milky way. Azeroth's in Andromeda in my universe.**

**Like always, thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta-ing this.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>That morning Verthelion and I felt, after getting food rations from Ayriala, a slight buzz of energy in us as opposed to the morning weariness most people had. She was an unassuming woman, with leather clothing and a somewhat disheveled look, but most of the night elves in Lor'danel had that feature. The food mainly consisted of bread and fruits of the kind brought by Calestrasza, who had gone to get more food in the morning, before I woke up. We stayed together, away from most of the elves, though that was more Verthelion's nervousness around mortals than anything else. However, I persuaded him that we should speak to the hippogryph master to secure a flight so that we could get to Stormwind and, by extension, our cave, that much faster. Verthelion agreed hesitantly; we couldn't just fly to Rut'theran, unless he wanted to try his luck swimming there in his mortal form from off shore so he wouldn't be caught. Seeing as he still stumbled occasionally, we decided he wouldn't be able to swim at all, hells, I couldn't swim! Fortunately it wasn't too hard to get the flight arranged, as most people in Lor'danel didn't want to leave family members and friends behind; the bad news was that it would arrive tomorrow, so we had one more day in Lor'danel, then a one day flight across the sea to Rut'theran, so overall the time to reach the boat was minimal. Still, not impossible.<p>

What alarmed me was when I decided to abruptly go to the blacksmith, Taryel Firestrike, and Verthelion exploded. "I don't have to go with you everywhere, Seluria! I'm not a whelp!" Luckily there wasn't anyone around! Or did luck have anything to do with it?

The anger in his voice made me stumble back. "Where did that come from?"

"You always keep dragging me around like I'm some helpless whelp," he growled. "Like I'll get killed the moment I step away from you!" He ground his teeth , pointing a finger at me.

Instantly, I understood what was going on. "Verthelion, is that what the Old God told you?"

Instantly the color drained from his face. He stumbled and sat, mouth open. "I - yes. I - I'm sorry. I don't know why I believed it." I sat down next to him and gripped his hand. "It's just, I don't know."

"Maybe you should try being around the mortals on your own. If it'll help."

"Yeah. Yeah, it will. I'm sorry for snapping at you. It's just, how did you get around it?"

"To tell you the truth?" I leaned closer to him. "Part of my subconscious got a mind of its own and is blocking them out."

He shook his head. "Unbelievable. And I suppose this part of you has its own name?"

I smiled. "Yes, actually. Nalestrasza."

"You've gone crazy."

"I have not!" I punched him on the shoulder, to which he punched me back. "If I went crazy, wouldn't I know it?"

"Well..."

"Oh, just go wherever."

He smiled and laughed, standing. "I'll be sure to. See you around."

"And try not to get exposed." I stood back up and continued to make my way to the blacksmith.

"I'll be sure to." Oh I hope you're right. After a few minutes encountering few night elves (they were mostly in the inn), I finally reached a sort of forge. The blacksmith Taryel leaned over a blazing hot furnace, sweat beading on his forehead. He lifted out a piece of metal with tongs, both glowing brightly. He placed the sword in the water, steam exploding from the barrel as the metal cooled rapidly. Metal was the one thing that was _not_ in shortage for Lor'danel; they had plenty of metal stolen from Twilight's Hammer raids purified by their priestesses, and of course everything was free due to the emergency situation.

I curtseyed to him on entering, and he looked up. "Is there something you need?"

I held up the artifact. "I need a way to keep this on my person at all times. I'm always afraid I'm going to lose it." It was true, it was a genuine fear of mine. It was hard enough for me to trust the artifact to Taryel, but in the end, the reward would be worth the risk of him losing it. It wasn't that I thought he'd steal it, but I didn't trust anyone else to not lose it. I had to admit, I was a little obsessed with, but I needed to understand everything about it.

"I think I know just the thing. I assume you don't want me to ruin the magic?"

"NO!"

He smiled. "I didn't think so. Come back at the end of the day, it'll be done."

I curtseyed again, placing the artifact in his hand. "My thanks." I turned around and walked out at a brisk pace. That was over with. Now I just needed to come back at the end of the day, and I'd never lose it again. Turning a road, with nowhere in mind, I realized that being separated from it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, the artifact captivated me with its possibilities; blasting it released blasts. What would happen if I became an adult with _actual_ magic? The possibilities...

I wrenched my thoughts back on track. Yes, I was keenly interesting in the artifact, but now that it was separate from me, I realized that it was just a, how would mortals put it? Ah, an academic interest. I kept walking circles around, aimlessly. Eventually I came up to a patch of green grass where some of the sentinels and civilians were training with weapons. A female in heavy armor, violet and as thick as the kind Kolkna wore,walked around, supervising the training other sentinels were giving to others.

A thought struck me. Calestrasza said that if we were planning to stay for more than one day, we had better be ready to fight. Since the night elves wouldn't take well to seeing me using twilight fire against the cultists (Even if it was against their enemy), it would probably be in my best interest to learn how to defend myself otherwise. I wouldn't be able to learn much, but it would be better than nothing.

I waited until the female in heavy armor stopped, then walked over to the sentinel who seemed to be in charge. "Excuse me, um..."

She shifted her eyes toward me, but otherwise didn't move. "Yes? I'm assuming you want to learn how to fight?"

"How did you - "

She held up her hand in a 'stop' gesture. "That's all _anyone_ comes to me for. I'll assign you to Sentinel Ayruel. STORMFEATHER!"

One of the sentinels sparring with each other broke off the fight and came running over. "Yes, Sentinel Moonwing?"

She gestured to me. "Train her. I'll be walking around supervising, like alwa - HEY!" She pointed to one of the sentinels training civilians, who snapped her head up. "What are you doing? That's too advanced for anyone but myself! How did you even _learn_ it?" She walked over to them, leaving me with Sentinel Ayruel.

She looked me over. "Have you ever held a glaive before?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Sword?"

"Nope."

"So that puts you on the same page as most other people here. Good to know." Ayruel picked up a sword, handing it to me. The blade was three feet long and the handle violet metal. "Odd, most people are taken off guard by the weight."

I kept a grip on the sword's handle, pointing it to the ground. "Really?"

"Yes, they assume from watching fights where the combatants are used to the weight move swords fast and so vastly underestimate the mass. Are you _sure_ you've never held a sword before?"

"Positive."

"Any other weapon?"

My claws. "Nope."

"Huh. Guess you're just strong, then. Come on, follow me." She picked another sword off the rack, virtually a twin to mine, and walked over to an empty spot next to others training with sentinels or sparring among themselves. I spotted Verthelion training out of the corner of my eye. Small world indeed.

She stood next to me and raised her sword, getting in a stance. "First things first. Show me your stance." I assumed one I thought felt good, putting my right foot almost behind my left foot. "No, no no. Put your legs more apart. That'll help you with stability."

I nodded, and fixed my stance. "Like that?"

"Good. Now, the second thing is that you need to..."

Ayruel ran me through a ton of exercises over the next few hours, showing me the right way to hold the sword, basic movements, and sparred against me to test my reflexes, which she was slightly impressed with. At the end of it, I was a little tired, which shocked her.

"I admit, I go hard on everyone I train, even if it's just for one day or so. You're holding up very well, anyone else would be on the verge of collapse, and seeing as how you at least don't _feel_ tired, I'm not going to run the risk of overexerting you."

I shrugged. "I'm like that."

"Mm hmm. Well, I'm going to go spar against Moonwing and frankly, get the crap beaten out of me. Try fighting with someone of your caliber, see how good you are."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me just yet. Remember, you've only been training for a few hours. You're not that good." She walked away, green hair trailing behind her. Now what to do? I walked around, looking for someone to fight against. Eventually, I bumped into Verthelion, luckily with the sword pointed away from him.

He looked at me, and I looked back at him. "So, are you feeling better?"

"Yes, I am. The _you-know-what_ spoke to me again while I was here. Told me you were abandoning me."

I shook my head. "Think about it," I whispered to him. "First it tries to make you hate me because you're always with me, now it's trying to make you hate me because we weren't with each other, which was directly brought by the first."

"They are crafty. So, what are you doing here?"

"I was practicing so we wouldn't have to use _fire_ if the cult attacked. It's actually a pretty interesting coincidence you were here too."

He nodded, smiling. "That's why I came he - okay, now it's saying you're following me."

"Like I said, it's a coincidence. So, do you want to spar? My trainer said I should."

He shrugged. "May as well. I have a lot of energy. Never felt like this before."

My blood ran could. "Oh no... I almost forgot about that."

"Forgot about what?"

"There's, there's something I forgot to mention to you. When I was in Stormwind, I started to get a buildup of energy. Eventually I just felt horribly sick. That was because I didn't fly. Verthelo, we're getting ground-sick. We _need_ to fly soon. It's the only way."

"Oh no. That's not good. How long do we have?"

"About a month, I'd say. Hopefully we can nab a flight before we get to Stormwind. Until then, want to spar?"

He shrugged "Sure, why not?" Verthelion got into his stance, and so did I. The first strike was a calm test, which he easily deflected. He retaliated in kind, which was simple enough to block. Slowly, we sped up, getting used to each other's mind, predicting strikes, deflecting and striking with more confidence. It wasn't like we were experts or anything, but compared to each other, we were a pretty even match, not to mention the extra energy marking the first signs of ground-sickness. He swept the sword at my legs, and I only barely jumped over it.

"Don't try to kill me," I hissed at him.

"My bad." I swung my sword at his incoming strike, deflecting it in a way that, by pure luck, unbalanced him and allowed me to go on the offensive. He parried each strike, before he seized an opportunity and we were both equally offensive and defensive. I blocked, struck, dodged, using Ayruel's teaching. Verthelion had likely had similar training, but likely not as intense as mine, however he probably trained for longer. So the two essentially canceled out, and even with just the bare minimum of pent up energy, swordplay took up virtually none at all. I don't know how long we sparred, but neither of us were getting tired. Eventually a few people started to notice, seeing as how we weren't getting tired... physically. Mentally, though, my nerves were fried trying to keep up with Verthelion, and I could tell he was too. It was a question as to who would slip up first.

As it turned out, it was me. I struck against Verthelion's light swing, deflected it and stepped in. He jumped back, and before I could re-balance myself, held his sword to my throat. "Alright," he said. "Now what?" He put his sword down.

"Well, now, I don't know. Not really much to do." I looked at the crowd gathered around us. "Maybe eat, and get away from _this crowd!" _The people crowding around us got the hint and dispersed.

Sentinel Moonwing walked up to us, clapping slowly but yet, not sarcastically. "Well done. I haven't seen anyone that good on their first day in years. How did you do that?"

I shrugged. "Well, we have _lots _of energy to burn."

She nodded. "Good. When the cultists attack, we can use that extra energy." She paused. "We can use ALL the help we can get, " she muttered under her breath, as if she thought we couldn't hear her. "Well, what are you standing there looking around for? Go someplace!" The sharpness and volume of her voice __terrified___ me._ We scattered. I walked to Ayriala and got our lunch rations, ate them, and decided on what to do for the rest of the day.

"Well we can't just sleep," said Verthelion, resting his head on his chin. "That would just make the _sickness_ worse. So what are we going to do?"

"Well, not exactly much we can do. Verthelo, we're going to be ground-sick. No fighting it. There's just, nothing we can do about it. Except, well, I _guess_ we can talk with Calestrasza."

At that, Verthelion shot me a look like he couldn't believe I had the _nerve_ to make that suggestion. I'd forgotten; Verthelion had only partially accepted the notion that the Red flight wasn't corrupt, and only for a few days at that. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, unless you have a better idea..."

"I hate your logic so much. Where are we even going to _find_ her anyway? A-a-and won't she be suspicious of us talking with her? I don't think that, as a dragon, people would be too willing to just go up to her and, and, _chat._ She'd get suspicious."

"So we'll be careful. It's either that or sitting around doing nothing, which'll just make our ground-sickness worse."

"Do you even know if she's _back_ yet?"

I fell silent. Then I continued. "Well, we can find out."

We walked to the inn, where we asked Kyteran where Calestasza was, her signal somehow being blocked.

"Why do you need to know where she is?"

"We want to talk to her."

"_She_ wants to talk to her."

"Verthelo, if you don't want to, you don't have to. I'm not going to make you come with me."

"No, it's better than nothing. So Kyteran, where _is_ the dragon?"

"She came back around noon, you were probably eating. She should be in the infirmary."

I curtseyed to her. "Thank you. I'll go find her."

"Just don't disrupt her work. There aren't that many injured left, but those that are, they're in pretty bad shape."

"I understand," I said. "Well, I'll be going now."

Kyteran nodded. "I know it is none of my business, but what do you want to talk to her about?"

"Well, it is none of your business," I said slyly, before exiting the inn. Calestrasza was in the infirmary, just as said. She walked over to a sentinel with a burn on her arms. I judged from my experience of inflicting burns at the Bastion of Twilight that it was a second degree burn. She waved a hand over it, causing fire to erupt out of her hands and engulf the arm, and when it dissipated, the burn was significantly smaller.

"Calestrasza, are you busy?" Almost the moment the words left my mouth I bit them back. What a stupid question!

"Yes, I am, why?"

"Well, it's nothing really important, but - "

"Seluria wants to chat with you."

Calestrasza looked up, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "After I'm finished, sure." Then she wrinkled her nose, as if something were off. "Wait outside for me to finish."

"Of course." We left Calestrasza to her healing. After a few minutes, she walked out.

"Seluria." She nodded to me, then wrinkled her nose again. My blood seemed to dry up. She was starting to scent twilight energy. "So, you want to talk. About what?"

"Well, what do you think we should? I'm just being friendly." Verthelion coughed.

She shrugged. "Well, there's not much to talk about. There's always the war, and preparations, and..."

"How about something not related to Deathwing?"

Calestrasza sighed. "Well, it's just, I'm worried about, everything. And, and my brood was wiped out, either that or taken to be twisted into the twilight flight - " My muscles clenched at that. There had to be a way to, to what? I don't know. I cut off the train of thought that lead to nowhere. " - and Deathwing keeps flying around annihilating everything. We're doing all we can to contain the damage but it's _just so hard_, and -"

"What's it like to fly?" I asked, even though I knew the answer. I could practically hear Verthelion laughing in his mind.

"It's incredible. The feeling of freedom, weightlessness... when I was a drake, I was the fastest flyer in my brood, _nobody_ could keep up with me..." She seemed to pull herself out of her self-monologue, turning back to me. "But of course, you wouldn't know about that." I wouldn't be so sure.

Verthelion had a question for her. "Doesn't it get a little unbearable, not being able to fly?"

She shrugged. "A little. Okay, very. It's actually a condition called flight-withdrawal. Horrid stuff. Not too hard to get around, though. Just need to swim, which is close enough to flying." I was taken aback by this, but didn't show it. So we could swim to stave off ground-sickness, or as she called it, flight-withdrawal. Only problem was... I didn't know how to swim. "So what were you two doing today?"

"Training with swords. I don't know about Seluria, but I feel pretty good."

I punched him in the shoulder. "We were pretty even. Don't know how long we fought, though. Felt like a pretty long time." A thought snuck itself into my brain. She had said she was an amazing flyer when she was a drake... just like I was. No, it couldn't be. There were lots of Reds, probably a lot of them could fly fast. But the thought stayed in my brain, and I felt the blood drain from my face.

I decided to push an uncomfortable topic. "What do you think about those twilight dragons?"

Immediately she went tense and snapped her head around at me, slight sparks of fire leaping between the fingers of her fists. "They are MONSTERS." My heart shivered. "My children, taken before they hatched to, to, be _corrupted_, and controlled by the fiends below the earth." She thought... she thought we were _controlled _by the Old Gods? Did everyone think that? "And my other children, killed by some, some _plague _the cultists gave them. My poor children, taken in the arms of those, those monsters, and Nalestrasza was taken by one of their drakes..."

My heart did clenched painfully, then seemed to skip a beat. Was that ice water in my veins? "My, my apologies. I-I shouldn't have pried." I stumbled away, going, going, anywhere! Would the world stop spinning already? When they were out of earshot, I sprinted as fast as I could for the inn, the world rocking back and forth below the sun and the brightened star. I ran into the inn, found the 'bed' I slept in the night before, and collapsed on it, still conscious. One of the night elves that were in there at the time ran over to me.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, just leave me alone!" He did just that.

I laid there, my head struggling to accept the fact. Calestrasza said that, that Nalestrasza was taken. Nalestrasza was her daughter. NO! I am not going to come to the conclusion AGAIN! But my brain continued with the process again. I knew very well that Nalestrasza was who I would have been had I not become twilight. Nalestrasza was Calestrasza's daughter, and that meant...

Calestrasza was my brood-mother.

Reaching the conclusion the second time was almost as bad as the first time. Her voice had sounded familiar for a reason. I had inherited my flying skills from her, no doubt.

My _mother_. And she didn't know. Should I tell her? No, she would kill me. I shook my head, still laying face down. That was just one of my deepest fears, that my mother would try to kill me if I ever found her. But how unrealistic was it? If I just went up to her and told her I was her daughter and a member of the twilight flight... no, not a chance. If I lead up to it, then she had a much smaller chance of killing me. But it was still terrifying. Odd, all the times I dreamed of convincing my mother, now that I finally had the chance, I lost all my nerve.

_You are a failure, Selriona!_ Valiona's voice came back to me, but I quickly shoved it down. Why was I sad? My mother was_ alive!_ Against the massive odds of surviving Deathwing's campaign, my brood-mother was _alive_ and practically within a stone's throw of me! I remembered Nalestrasza's words. _A near miss. A tragic coincidence._ She couldn't be referring to Calestrasza, could she? But... but what if the 'near miss' was me failing to persuade her that I wasn't evil? Or just not working up the nerve to tell her in the first place? Nalestrasza had said that she couldn't find a way to 'fix it'. But why would I trust her? I'd only seen her three times, and the first time she had tried to claw my eyes out. But she had seemed so genuinely broken. Could I truly tell her? Or would that just make things even _worse_ than if I didn't?

My brood-mother, and she might never know. And what was worse, I just _left_ after she said that. How suspicious would she be? What had my face looked like? How much had it betrayed?

I shivered, despite the temperate weather. I rubbed my left hand along my forehead, picking up beads of cold sweat. I had to figure it out. I would leave the next day, and who knows if I would ever see my mother again!

_Even with all my - your - brainpower, I don't know if there will ever be a second chance._

No. I couldn't let my only chance slip through my claws. I had to tell her. I hoisted myself to my feet, swaying from emotional nausea, all ground-sickness suppressed. I stumbled, only to find myself being held upright by someone.

"Seluria, what's wrong? You just ran away. You don't look so good. Is it the flight-withdrawal?"

I shook my head. "I wish. Come on, I need to talk to you in private. How long was I gone, by the way?"

"A few hours. Let's go into the forest, we can talk there."

"Hours? Titans, it felt like minutes." I walked out of the inn, Verthelion still supporting me. Eventually we walked across the bridge, until finally, after briefly reassuring a sentinel we were alright, that Verthelion was just getting medicinal herbs for me, into the woods. The pulsing on the side of my head told me that Calestrasza - my _mother_ - was still in Lor'danel. We walked deeper into the woods, until Verthelion judged it safe. We both let go of our illusions. I flopped down on a flat rock, gazing up, wings unfurled to their full length, Verthelion standing beside me.

"Selriona, what's wrong? You look sick, but you said it's not flight-withdrawal, but - "

"It's Calestrasza."

"What did that _red_ do to you?"

"She confirmed my suspicions. Verthelion, you know how I told you about Nalestrasza, right?"

He nodded. "Yes, your subconscious. What about her?"

"She's who I would have been had I not been changed. And, and Calestrasza specifically mentioned one of her children's names..."

"Was Nalestasza. Selriona, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

I managed a smirk. "That depends. What do you think I'm saying?"

"That Calestrasza is your brood-mother."

My eyes started to warm. "Yes. She is. How didn't I notice it before? All the signs were there. I _knew_ she felt familiar, and the way Nalestrasza acted in my dream... what can I do? I-I can't just tell her, but I don't know if I'll ever get another chance. What should I do?"

"I don't know, Selriona. I don't really know about this, but it sounds like you're having a little bit of an identity crisis."

I laughed sardonically. "What would you know? That fits perfectly." I pulled myself to my paws, standing up. "Who was your brood-mother again? I don't remember."

"Umbraliona. Why, wouldn't you have seen it in the registry?"

I froze. "You, you don't know? Her name wasn't _in_ the entry and - oh we're getting off topic and the _consequences!"_

"She's dead." Verthelion sighed. "I, I..." Suddenly he roared. "OH SHUT UP!"

"The Old God again, huh?"

"He said that my mother died because of yours."

"There's no way to prove that, and it's so unlikely. She said that she's been traveling Azeroth helping. The odds that she would stray close to where your brood-mother was..."

"Impossibly small." He smacked his tail-club against the ground. "We're straying from the topic!" he said irately. "We can deal with my brood-mother later. This might be our only chance to deal with yours." The way he said 'deal with' made it sound like we were planning an assassination. He walked over to me and draped a wing around me.

"So, should I tell her? If I can't convince her we're not evil, and don't say there's no 'we', if she knows I'm a drake, she'll know about you. She already suspects, and if I can't convince her, we're dead."

"She does suspect. The way she kept sniffing, she must've smelled some of our energy. You have to tell her. Like you said, this might be our _only_ chance. We can always enter the twilight realm if things go out of hand."

I huffed. "_I _can enter the twilight realm. You just follow after me. For some reason you can't open the portal."

"Or maybe you're just especially good at opening it."

I considered this for a few seconds. "Maybe. But back to my m-mother. How can I convince her? If I fail - "

"Then you get the hells out of there. We fly to Rut'theran, and enter the boat through the twilight realm. But try to convince her."

"Alright. When should I try?"

"As soon as you can. Tomorrow is the absolute latest, but don't rush it. Take your time." His wing relaxed, and he looked down. I realized he was a lot sadder about his brood-mother than he let on. I bent my head over and nuzzled him, feeling him relax an appreciable amount.

"Thanks. I will. We should start getting back." I looked up at the sky, the star brightening as night slowly approached after the time it took for us to arrive at our location. "We should head back. They'll be wondering why we were coming back so late."

"Not before a quick flight."

Calestrasza was at the very edges of my senses, and we were very distant from Lor'danel so, "What the hells_, _it'll help with our ground-sickness."

"You don't sound like you want to fly much. Are you sick?"

"No, I just don't really want to _fly right now!_" And with that, I jumped up, and in seconds, broke through the tree-tops, sending the birds squawking and my ground-sickness fading. Moments later, Verthelion exploded behind me, but he had no chance to catch me. I flew upwards, twisting around to see him struggling to keep up, and laughed airily. "You can't keep up with me and you know it!" I flew higher, and higher, until I was so far up the trees were a blurred mass of green. I let myself fall down, watching in amusement as Verthelion sailed up past me, before he too fell into a dive. I fell faster and faster, until I pulled up and, using my remaining motion, propelled myself at breakneck speeds into the air.

I heard Verthelion's wings cut through the air like a claw, and he caught up with me. He bared his fangs in a wide smile. "So, what was that about me not being able to keep up with you?"

I rolled my eyes. "You were flapping on the dive and you know it. Now relax and enjoy the zero gravity." I let wing relax and gravity hold me. Soon, gravity held me and Verthelion in a smooth line for a moment, where we didn't accelerate. The brightened star beat down on us, like a candle above the bonfire that was the setting sun. His mouth opened. I wasn't surprised he hadn't felt zero gravity before; the circumstances were pretty hard to create for more than a few instants. Then we started plummeting again, but we caught ourselves on the ground with a light thump.

"We should get going back. They might not remember we left, but they'll be suspicious we were coming back so late."

"True," I said nodding. We ran back, only shifting to our mortal forms when we deemed it too dangerous to do without. The sentinels gave us little trouble, and Verthelion went to get his dinner rations, grimacing at how he had to rely on a mortal for food. I remembered how I had felt like that my first day with Amanthe when she bought me food in Kharanos. I'd changed so much...

I walked over to the forge, surprised to see nobody was there. On a pedestal was my artifact.

I sprinted over to it and scooped it up, alarmed that there was NO change. That blacksmith hadn't done anything! Then I continued lifting it, feeling the chain attached to its back. For a moment I was worried that the change in metal would have ruined the magic, but after testing it with a spark and the normal beam of concentrated life magic exploding out, I was satisfied, and placed it around my neck, feeling it warming my heart. I walked over to the inn, finding Verthelion.

He eyed the artifact hanging over my clothing, reaching up to the indent of my neck, where the skin created a small hole. "So, we're going to use it to, you know?"

I held it up. "Yup." To disguise our smell from my _mother_. Titans, it was really her! I walked up next to him and took off the artifact, holding it's glass toward us. I placed my hand on it's back, and launched a fireball directly into it. The conical blast swept over us, ruffling my hair. The narrower beam had less energy, but it was so condensed it actually had a notable punch to it. The less intense, wider blast however, did not. I felt the faint tinges of hunger in me fade, but I knew that was just an illusion. The important thing was that my brood-mother wouldn't scent my identity and disembowel me before I could explain myself.

...yay.

"I'm going to talk to her. Now, while I still have the nerve."

"You do that. I'll get ready to run."

"Do you really have that little faith in me?"

"No, I think you're capable. After all, you did convince me to, you know. It's just that, I'm worried about how she might take it."

I nodded. "If she does decide to kill us, I'll come here first. Open a portal and get the hells out."

"Wouldn't she take it?"

"She might. That's a risk we'll have to take. But first things first. See you around. I hope." I walked out the inn, the slow trickle of kaldorei into the inn slowly increasing. I walked down to the infirmary, where I sensed she was... but dinner rations first!

I veered around and made my way to Ayriala, and quickly downed the rations she gave me. Alright, NOW I'm going to tell her. I walked quickly over to the infirmary, but the closer I got, the more the butterflies in my stomach multiplied and the heavier my legs felt. By the time I was at the door, each step felt like the foot was made of solid elementium. I took deep gaping breaths like a fish out of water, and walked in against the veritable magnetic field of nerves.

Calestrasza - Titans, I still had trouble getting over the fact that she was my _brood-mother -_ looked up as I shut the door, closing out the night.

"Seluria. I'm sorry I snapped at you. It's just been so hard for me."

"No, you don't have anything to apologize for." Even if she didn't smell the twilight essence on me, no doubt she could feel my tension. I'm pretty sure someone could've weaponized my fear. "If anything, I should apologize for pressing a hard topic."

Calestrasza lowered her head, waving a hand over the last patient, all others being mended by the red's healing abilities. Green spirals ran around the night elf like ribbons, bringing color back to his cheeks. He sighed in his sleep. "I accept your apology. But I can sense you didn't come here for that."

Bile started rising in my throat, and I had to grip the artifact tightly so that's its aura could comfort me even slightly. I didn't dare use it on myself even if it had recharged slightly; no doubt she would sense the twilight energies from so close, and I hadn't explained yet. I had to press on. "I didn't. There's, there's something I need to tell you about."

Calestrasza's eyes flickered, turning slitted for an instant. She still suspected. "What about? I'm in Lor'danel to help."

You can't exactly help with this, just not make it worse. "What if I were to, to, to..."

"To what?"

No, it couldn't be. I HAD to tell her! "I - oh, it's so hard to say. I'm - " I doubled over, fighting off regurgitation. Calestrasza ran over to me, trying to heal me.

"Seluria!" I groaned. "Whatever it is, you can tell me tomorrow, you're clearly nervous, and sleep will help."

"N-no. I have to tell you now. I'm - " Bile rose in throat again. " - going to sleep." I ran out as fast as I could, screaming and cursing at myself over and over again. I sprinted into the inn, ignoring my lungs burning from the long sprint. I collapsed on my designated bed, Verthelion rolling over next to me.

"Well? What happened?"

"I, I - " I took a deep breath, trying to stem the sobs. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it."

Nalestrasza's words come back to me._ But you'll find out. Yes you will. You'll learn. And then you'll weep_.

She was right. I did find out. I couldn't do it. I was too weak, too _scared_, and I payed the price. For a moment I considered going back to tell her for real, but I knew in my heart that I didn't have it in me. Besides, I was already asleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	29. Chapter 29:Bluffing

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta-ing this.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The sun peered through the windows of the inn, illuminating everything in radiant, joyous light. The walls were bathed in the golden waves, the grass soaked it up like horses drinking from a trough. The brightened star had dimmed, but even that contributed, illuminating an otherwise wonderful day. What few birds there were chirped in the hidden tree tops, the rapids burbling almost in tune with them. The temperature was mildly warm, with a cool breeze wafting through the air. The atmosphere was clean and the air smelled fresh, and the general emotion of the mortals was that it was going to be a great day.<p>

I hated it. After my failure yesterday, it was like the world __mocked__ me. I bared my teeth and growled at nothing in particular. This was miserable. Calestrasza's pulsing was in the streets, walking away from the infirmary, towards Ayriala's regular position. So I would delay breakfast; I couldn't bear to face her after what happened yesterday. I went down to the 'sparring range' as I called it and took up one of the civilians awake early. I would be lying if I said I wasn't frustrated with my failure to tell her, my _cowardice_. I was definitely behind my opponent in terms of training, but I was still stronger, and _very_ mad at myself. Within seconds I hit his sword so hard he dropped it out of fright. Even then, irritation bubble underneath my skin. I was about to challenge someone else to a duel, but I noticed Calestrasza's signal approaching.

I fled. It was odd, how angry I was at myself, but the instant she started to approach me, I ran and hid like a hare from a fox. I fled to the forge, then a smaller building I hadn't been in before. I looked in, finding nothing of interest, then walked on. I grabbed my hair in frustration, pulling lightly so as not to tear it out, luckily I was lucid enough for that. Why? Why was this happening to me? Why did my brood-mother have to be in the exact spot _I _was? I narrowed my eyes, picking up a small pebble. It was the cult. The damned Twilight's Hammer. She never would have stayed here if they didn't need help. And if it weren't for the cult...

I clenched my fist around the helpless rock. It was their fault. They deserved to die. I fought back tears as I remembered my failure last night. I started walking, constricting around the stone harder and harder. Some flames started to lick around it. I decided what I was going to do. I had to. The rock cracked under the pressure, splitting in two and flying out of my hand. I guess more of my strength remained in my mortal form than I thought. Good to know. I walked around the town until I found Verthelion at the sparring range. Calestrasza had turned around at the small building I had peeked into. Was she_ following_ me? How could she know? The artifact should have been preventing her from scenting me. Out of nervousness I used a small blast of its power on myself, recovered from the blast, and went on to talk to Verthelion.

I waited for him to place his sword on a rack "Verthelo."

"Yes, Seluria? Thanks for waiting for me to finish, by the way."

"The cult. We can kill them."

"What? Why?"

"It's _their _fault. All their fault. We know how they work. We know their weak points. They'll trust us; we can surprise them. And we'd be doing the mortals a favor." I kept my voice down so that nobody could pick up on our conversation.

"You want us to _what?_ Selr- Seluria, have you thought this through? The cultists here have been attacking Lor'danel for quite a while. This means they have a very large force with reinforcements. Do you really think we can take them? We're strong, but nowhere _near_ that strong. Besides," he said as he crossed his arm. "We're leaving soon. Then we won't have to deal with them."

"How do you know we can't take them? Let's at least scout them out. They can't be so far to launch almost daily attacks."

Verthelion looked around. Calestrasza got closer, when she suddenly turned around, heading towards the hippogryphs. "Alright. It'll be good to minimize our flight-withdrawal. But what if they attack while we are out? Calestrasza _did_ say that if we were planning on staying for more than a day we should plan to fight."

"Well... we can provide aerial support, can we? It would help towards... getting people to know... how we aren't controlled by the... Old gods."

"You're making this up as you go along."

I smacked him on the arm, earning me one back. "So what if I am? I have a point!"

"Alright, but we don't know what form Calestrasza uses to defend Lor'danel. She'll see us, she might not register which side we're helping, and if she's in her true form when that happens..."

My throat tightened at the recurring thought of my brood-mother trying to kill me; I'd gotten over my fear of Verthelion hating me, but this one was so much worse. "We... I have to risk it. The cultists, they're the reason I'm tearing myself over my brood-mother. She wouldn't have stayed here if it weren't for them..."

"They're the reason you were changed..." Calestrasza's signal arrived at the hippogryphs, and stopped.

"No! I didn't mean that. If that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met you." Or Amanthe, or Samuel, or so many people I valued. Nalestrasza, while an incredible ego-maniac, was smart, and she wouldn't have existed in my mind otherwise.

"Thanks. The Old God planted that thought. It's getting worse." He massaged his temples with two fingers. I looked up at the glowing star in the sky, then back at him. It was getting dimmer.

"Worse? How?"

"Psychology. Repetition is the key to making someone believe something. And the Old God is repeating _so_ much. And it's even worse when you're not here, but when you are it uses the 'She doesn't trust you to not kill yourself' line."

"No way out. There's got to be a way to silence it. Titans, I did. But you don't exactly have a second consciousness. What can we do?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I'll risk staying with you. At least you can help drive off the whispers. Hells, maybe if you tell me the opposite of what the Old God does enough times they'll cancel out."

I chuckled. "Maybe. Let's go into the woods."

"Yes, let's." We walked out of the sparring range, ducking between sentinels so we wouldn't appear suspicious disappearing into the forest _again_, and out of Calestrasza's range. We released our illusions and took to the skies, looking around for the cultist camp that had to be around somewhere. Interestingly enough, my artifact remained on me, and the chain attached to it expanded to accommodate me. Interesting. Was that due to the chain or the transformation magic itself?

We flew farther and farther away, before finally arriving at a spot a few hours southwest, though only an hour at our pace. The camp wasn't fairly large, but it wasn't small either. From our point high up, I could see roughly five dozen cultists milling around, training, or trying to bind elementals. I noticed a shimmering, violet portal in the middle of the camp, no doubt where they got reinforcements. The group here overall seemed about half as large as the one at the Bastion. I knew that couldn't be right, the cult was vast yes, but not large enough to divert so many forces everywhere. Whoever was in charge now clearly saw Lor'danel as a threat. I smelled smoke in large quantities, far more than the few campfires should have been able to provide. I looked closely and saw a terrifying sight.

"Ascendents. Three Fire Ascendents." Maybe the brightened star was an omen about them?

Verthelion nodded in agreement. "That's bad." Indeed it was. Fire Ascendents were the most powerful on the battlefield in terms of raw strength. Like all Ascendents, they possessed all the skill and intelligence they had in their mortal life, backed by the physical and magical powers of an elemental's essence. But Fire Ascendents were the worst. Their personalities were just a little more chaotic, lusting for battle just a little bit more than in their mortal lives. The other elements could kill effectively, but none were as volatile as the Fire Ascendent. Furthermore, the power of the Ascendent increased geometrically with that of the element who's essence was used; even the essence of a scorchling could create an Ascendent capable of challenging a Kor'kron orc.

And the cult _never_ used scorchlings.

"Verthelion, we need to turn back. We need to tell them! If the Ascendents are part of the attack, which they will be, then..."

"Then Lor'danel will be burned to the ground. But why are the Ascendents arriving just _now_? They can't have been here before, they would have won."

"Maybe we caught them at a bad time. Come on let's _go_." I turned in the air, setting course back.

"Hold on. Exactly what are we going to tell them?" My mother's signal appeared on the edge of my senses. "We flew over to the cultist camp and saw what they were doing? That won't exactly go over well with them."

"We have to tell them! They have to know!"

"But what can we do? They'll kill us if they find out."

I groaned. "Well we can't just let them die!"

"I don't think we have a choice in this. Besides, isn't our hippogryph to Lor'danel supposed to be arriving _today_?"

"In the afternoon, at sunset. I can't just leave them to die, damn it I can't believe I'm doing this." I turned up, letting the sky vanish from my field of vision to be replaced by the ground, and that spun around, leaving me flying towards the cultists again.

"Selriona! Wha-what are you doing?"

"If we can't tell the mortals about the Ascendents, we'll just have to back-stab the cult."

"Look, I know you hate them but _you're going to get yourself killed_."

"Then what do you suggest? Wait for them to attack, then fly away? We already decided flying to Rut'theran on our own is a bad idea, and if they attack today we lose our chance. Then we need to _fly_ all the way to the Eastern Kingdoms!"

"Well, if you insist on doing this, let's land over by the portal and use mortal forms. We'll ask if there's an attack going out, and if there is, we follow it, then attack from within."

"Sounds like a plan." The camp came up below me, and I flew circles, descending. A few of the cultists scattered, but recollected when they saw the color of my scales. Verthelion landed next to me, violet energy swirling along his scales and slowly compressing him. I used the form I had when I was in Stormwind, but decided that, if I was going to be in a fight, it was best to have protection. My clothing hardened and coalesced, forming metal. Long before Verthelion finished shape-shifting, I pulled the magic back into myself, feeling the weight of the violet armor with the magical disk over it. Not as heavy as I expected, but notable. I waited there, scanning the camp, and almost laughed. A year ago, I had respected the cult. I had thought them in the right. One of them, a dwarf male in violet armor, walked up to us, and bowed.

Verthelion started. "What's the situation here?"

"I apologize for asking, but who are you from?"

He snarled and bared his teeth. "I do not see how it matters to _you_. What is important is why you haven't pulverized Lor'danel to dust yet."

"We will, soon! Alexis, Valoura, and Grosh have just ascended, we're going to attack today-"

"Are you even the one in charge?" I asked irately.

"Ah, ah no. I'll go get him for you." He was gone in a blink.

I turned to Verthelion, a smile threatening to pull at my lips. "Great acting," I told him in Draconic. "I almost believed you."

"Thanks. So, we already know they're going to attack today. I'd better come up with who sent us."

"How about Thyrinar? I'd heard that even Valiona respected his power."

"Yes, that works." For a while we waited there with sour expressions forced on our faces, until a male worgen walked up to us, the dwarf nowhere in sight. He wore mail armor, wrapping around from his neck to his waist, before the mail smoothly melted into plate. Dark runes were etched along the leggings, and they seemed to twist and writhe under my gaze. His fur was a dark silver, blending in well with the dreary atmosphere of Darkshore.

He nodded to us. "I assume you have been sent here concerning our failure to take Lor'danel?"

I growled at him, letting some of my anger at the cult seep through. "We have, mortal. That dwarf that fetched you said you ascended three today. They'd better be enough."

He nodded, and I could detect a little of the chemicals involved in fear. "Oh, they will, I assure you. Valoura, Grosh and Alexis were the best of the best, out of maybe fifteen ascendency candidates. We bound them with the essence of revenants gifted to us by Majordormo Staghelm directly. They are more than capable of destroying Lor'danel itself, but... we have a problem."

"Deathwing does _not_ accept excuses. It had better be a GOOD problem." I let smoke curl off of my clenched fists, while Verthelion fixed him with a steely glare.

The worgen balked, even though, being the leader, he could likely kill me easily with me in this form. Still, twilight fire, while being most effective against dragonkin, still burned horrendously. "It is. There's a red dragon protecting them. Each time we try an assault it assumes its true form and afterwards heals all their wounded. Our ascendents can't fight the red, not with fire of all things."

Verthelion huffed next to me. "So you want us to take care of the red _for_ you. Thyrinar told us you were competent."

"Apologies for diverting the conversation, b-but what happened to Thyrinar after his mission to the Nexus?"

A spark of twilight flame danced along Verthelion's hands, making the worgen stiffen. "How the hells should I know? We were sent here to make sure you incompetent mortals could handle a single outpost of night elves. _Evidently _you can't handle that much." We locked eyes with each other. "_Should_ we aid them?" he asked me, still in Common, to make sure the worgen heard everything.

"We should. Like I said, Deathwing does not accept excuses. We were sent here to make sure Lor'danel was burned to ashes, and we are not leaving until it is." I fixed the worgen another glare. "When will your attack be? We need defensive positions, past stratagems - "

"Yes, yes of course. I'm not going to be the one to deny the favored Flight of the Master. The Twilight Father will have my head if he found out!" The Twilight Father? Whoever it was, they were likely the new leader of the cult. "Over here, our records are in here. Normally, I don't show anyone, but if you were sent here under the impression we are failing - and we are, really, to be honest. I'm rambling."

The papers were stacked up, impossible to read due to the lengthy encryption of the cult. However, there were a few diagrams here and there; pictures of Lor'danel with purple and green dots, being the forces, along with a large red one, and arrows showing movement. I leafed through them, stopping when I saw another diagram, this time the green and red dots being hollow, showing predictions, and the purple dots swarming the red one.

My mother.

There were also three orange dots, which were to go through the bridge, burning it behind them as the orange aura around it showed. They would go in and basically destroy everything, including the hollow green dots. I examined the formations, then passed it to Verthelion, who did the same. He scoffed at the worgen. "Interesting. And tell me, what exactly has been _keeping that red from flying over here and killing you all?_"

"She tried once. We drove her off, and she hasn't tried once since."

"Drove her back. Amazing. But I suppose it is easier to be on defense. Now, you haven't told us when you plan to attack."

"Yes, how silly of me. We're going to attack them in roughly an hour or so."

I nodded. "Good. We will set out to scout them from above. When you move out, we'll be in position within the twilight realm to take care of the red _for_ you."

"My thanks. Shall I revise our stratagem or...?"

I scoffed. "Of course not. Even with our strength, we are merely drakes. Red dragons are to be treated with caution on the battlefield at all times. She will have magic; we will not. If your Ascendents truly are as powerful as you claim, they should have no problem with the night elves, leaving you _mortals_ to aid us."

"Understood. Is there anything else we can do for you?"

I looked at Verthelion. "Anything else?" I asked him in Draconic.

"No, I don't think so. We know what to do. Let's go." He turned back to the worgen. "We will go. See to it you do _not_ ruin this, or it will be all our heads." He let his illusion, releasing a fog of violet smoke, under which I transformed as well, already bringing up the energy for a portal to the twilight realm. By the time it cleared, the portal opened. I faded into it, and Verthelion followed. I sealed the rift, and allowed myself to relax.

"You were _great_, Verthelion."

"So were you. And what was with the armor?"

I shrugged. "Just a little thing I thought would help. We really didn't have a plan, did we?"

"Haha, nope. Made it up as we went along. Still, I think that was quite persuasive."

"Yes. Let's go back and tell them what their plans are." I crouched, ready to explode into the air, but Verthelion stopped me.

"Hold on. Exactly what are you going to tell them? We can't exactly tell them we _flew_ over to the cultist camp and got hold of their battle plans."

I growled. Of course he was right. It was either tell them and get killed... or leave them to die. Leave my mother to die. "We have to tell them! We don't have a choice. Or at the least tell Calestrasza. We should at least get over there, we can mull things over in Lor'danel." I crouched again, but this time instead of stopping me, Verthelion followed my example. Soon we were soaring through the air at incredible speeds. I'd known about the extra strength from the twilight realm, and how it prevented exhaustion. Still, it took me off guard. The hour trip it took us to arrive at the camp was shortened to merely twenty five or so minutes on the way back. I landed in the forest, Calestrasza's signal being at the inn. After leaving the twilight realm and entering mortal forms, I was exhausted from the effort of opening two portals. The twilight realm didn't rejuvenate me; it merely kept me from feeling tired, like when I was ground-sick. So I doubled over, hands on the ground, taking deep breaths.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Just, let me get my bearings. Portals - very tiring." After a few minutes I got up, dusting myself off. "Let's go. We need to tell someone." I looked at the sun, high in the sky, but it was winter. It would descend quickly. We had only so much time. Calestrasza was walking to Ayriala. When we got there, I turned to him. "Verthelo, can you leave me alone? I..." I sighed. "I need to do this alone."

"Are you sure you can?"

"No, I'm not. But I have to try. I'll never get over it otherwise."

"Get over what?"

"Eh, it's one of my worst fears. I found it out when I drank a nightmare elixir. Here I go." I took a step forward, butterflies already multiplying inside of my stomach. I heard Verthelion slowly walking away. I bit my lip to keep from whimpering. I forced my legs forward. I would do this. It felt like something was inside me, eating away at my insides. Eventually, I reached her, just as she was turning away from Ayriala, disengaging whatever conversation they were having. The kaldorei went back into the stores of food she kept, and I ran to catch up to Calestrasza.

"Wait!" She turned around to look at me. "I-I have to talk to you."

"Is it the same thing that it was yesterday?"

"Not, exactly. But it has to do with it. Come on, let's go into the woods. I'll tell you there." Part of the reason I wanted to go into the woods was that she wouldn't have the space to transform, but I would. If she decided to a-attack me, I could escape. Oh my, I'm stuttering.

"Alright." She led me to the woods. All my internal alarms went off, telling me to run. Fear settled in me like a disease, ruining my perception of space and time. Only her presence kept me from running, like she was using her magic to keep me in step with her. All too soon, we were in. "So, what is it you wanted to tell me?"

"The cult, they're going to attack soon. They have three ascendents with them, fire ascendents, who are going to attack the night elves. The others will fight you."

"Three fire ascendents? Titans..." She looked back at me. "Wait a moment. How do you know this?" A small fireball started to coalesce in her right palm, sparks forming out of the air and flying into the central mass. "You're not a part _of _the cult, are you?"

"That's the thing. I - sort - of used to."

The world fell down and the ground appeared at my back, causing a spike of pain to shoot through my spine. Wait, no not the ground. A tree. Calestrasza had her hand clenched tightly around my throat, her other hand poised centimeters from my face, the fireball growing at an alarming rate. "And you decide to tell me this NOW?" She brought the fireball closer. "That does not explain it. If you USED to be in the cult, then you wouldn't know what they were going to do _now_, would you? So I'll ask you again. How do you know? Or how about, you don't know at all, but rather are trying to trick me?" She leaned in closer. "Now that I'm really paying attention, I _can_ smell some twilight energy on you."

I struggled to breathe, not from her hand, but from my terror. I kept seeing flashbacks to my nightmare. That fear came up again. I needed to tell her, but how? She would kill me the instant she found out, in this state. "I - I - "

A horn sounded in the distance. Calestrasza let me go. "We're under attack. I will go. If what you say turns out to be true, then I will act on it. But if it is not..." The fireball she held flared. "You know what will happen. _Don't_ interfere, mortal." Then she ran back out, red mist swirling in her wake.

_Don't interfere. _Like hells. That was my mother the cult was planning to kill! I ran out, with absolutely no plan at all. I heard other footsteps besides me, but out of sight. Cultists. I got out of the woods and already saw what happened. The night elves were fighting in one-on-ones, scattered throughout. They were vainly trying to get into some sort of arrow-head formation, but the mortals were keeping them disorganized. Chaos, the cornerstone of the Twilight's Hammer. I smelled smoke from within the woods, and a full grown red dragon stood in the clearing, swiping her claws at cultists, launching fireballs, and occasionally releasing a green burst of light around a night elf. Slowly, though, as the ascendents approached, the cultists diverted to her.

"Selriona!" I looked at the source of the noise. Verthelion was running towards me in his mortal form, not bothering to use my fake name. "We need to fly."

"_What?_"

"It's the only way we'll be able to help!"

"But-"

"We don't have time to argue! Follow me!" I did as he told, taking to the air. The battlefield opened itself to me, and I could clearly see the three ascendents approaching from different angles, even though there was only one bridge. I launched a fireball at one of the cultists below, nailing the tauren in her head. It didn't outright kill her, but it was enough of a distraction for Moonwing to put her glaive through her chest."Don't. We'll need all our fire for the ascendents."

"What about my -"

"She can take care of herself. The Ascendents are what will kill the mortals, if nothing else." Sure enough, one of the psuedo-elementals had taken the field, and a dozen kaldorei were either on fire or charred husks. All the cultists that had been fighting there diverted to my mother. "Wait for them to reach the bridge, then we'll blast them off into the water. They'll need the bridge so that they don't fall into the river."

"Got it." We soared high up, dodging the occasional glaive thrown at us. Calestrasza had a cocoon around her made of shimmering flame. Soon enough, the first ascendent began crossing the bridge, wood smoldering wherever it stepped.

"NOW!" At Verthelion's command both of us dove, pulling up and sailing at an angle perpendicular to the bridge. Both of us launched a fireball at the ascendent, knocking him back off the bridge.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. Huge billows of steam rose up, and the ascendent climbed out, roaring in pain where water had gotten it. The flames flickering along it were dimmer, however. It grasped its weapon tightly, a large pole-arm with a blazing red crystal at the top. Flames erupted from it, flowing down the weapon and into its arm, and the flames increased in intensity.

As I pulled up, however, Verthelion kept going forward. His paws slammed into the head of another ascendent, tearing the head clean off like a glob of lava. He roared in pain, dropping the head which, on touching the ground, burst into glowing cinders along with the body. That left two. I quickly rose up, avoiding a glaive thrown at me. By now, the cultists were joining around Calestrasza as the kaldorei ran after the ascendents. A sheet of fire exploded in my vision. The other elemental had raised its hands at me, levitating off the ground. Thick rivers of molten flame came out and washed over me, clinging to my stomach. I screeched in pain and dropped towards the river. It was dangerous, but if I didn't...

The fire seared me, but touching the rapids quenched it quickly enough. I surged up through the swirling water, coughing as it splashed into my mouth. The current swept me under the bridge. There had to be a way out.

I reached a rock, and suddenly was tugged under, but not before I could get my claws on it. The water seemed to form a sideways whirl-pool with the rock, pulling anything that came close down. I had encountered something like that before soon after entering Darkshore, but I had been in the twilight realm then, strong enough to hold on to the rock. Now though...

Water gripped and pulled at my tail. The onrush of water behind me, piling over my wings, didn't help either, and more than a few times I got a mouthful.

Water. Why did it have to be water? I heard the beating of wings behind me. "Selriona, use your mortal form. I'll pull you out." I did what he told me, and soon enough his claws were around my shoulders, pulling me up. He let go and I resumed flight.

"Thanks." I coughed up more water.

"You did it for me. That's not to say I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't." The other two ascendents had passed the bridge and burned it down behind them, ironically leaving the night elves behind. Only, one of the elementals was calling down a rain of fire, keeping them contained.

I launched another blast at the leading one, followed by Verthelion doing the same. Its flames flickered, and dulled. It tried to draw on its weapon again, but it lacked energy. A few more blasts fit it, prompting it to look up.

A glaive sailed past my head, making me give a startled roar.

The elemental held up its hands, causing a sphere of rippling flames to surround it. Our blasts just bounced off like rocks thrown at metal, deflecting into a building and setting it on fire. "We can't keep blasting that one. We need to find another way."

"We can help my mother. She can crush them; fire won't work against her very well."

"Sounds like a plan. You cut off the cultists with a quick strafe, I'll blast them."

"Just be careful not to hit her! I don't want to test her defenses."

"Got it." At his assurance, I put on a burst of speed and dove at the cultists. The plan was simple; I'd place a few lines of fire to cut off their escape, then we'd blast them from afar. I took a deep breath, bringing fire into my crop. I let it loose, spraying over a few cultists who only barely dove out of the way.

Calestrasza seemed to be holding her own. Her barrier seemed to deflect the few magical attack coming her way, even if her own claws and fire were dodged. I turned around for another strafe to completely seal them off, but it turns out she had another idea. I soared behind her to cut the cult off there, flame spewing from my mouth, when a crushing force imbedded itself in my stomach. I gasped as my breath left me, the spikes digging into me and forcing me up. Within seconds the ground found me, and I curled up moaning in pain. What was that? I blinked my eyes, staring at the spiked tail club of my mother. Oh. A twilight blast hit an orc in his chest, knocking him back and immolating him. I didn't see Verthelion though; Calestrasza's wings blocked him from sight.

Getting my breath back, I took to the sky, pelting others. A few of them noticed and tried to attack me with shadow bolts and twilight fireballs, but none of them worked.

"How's it going?" I asked Verthelion, flying next to him.

"Not good. They're holding out somehow." A huge explosion rocked the world around me. Turning around mid-air, I saw what happened. The ascendents had completely blown up the inn; scattered logs flew into the air, trailing smoke, and the explosion itself punched a crater fifteen meters deep. It was just... just _gone_. "Oh no. We have to go there. _Come on_. We'll dive-bomb them."

"Got it." Both of us soared up higher, until Lor'danel looked like a map. Flames flickered along several of the buildings, and the night elves were trying to get across the river, failing miserably. Calestrasza breathed a stream of fire on the cultists just as her barrier imploded. Then we dove at the two Ascendents, who shone like the sun.

"Verthelion, I'll take the left one, you take the right."

"Got it." I stretched out my claws, aiming for the one I was to decapitate. Sure enough, their barriers had dissipated, and my claws neatly raked across its neck; Ascendents were powerful, but only the ones of Earth had natural armor. As dangerous as fire ascendents were, they were very weak defensively, and died quickly to focus fire on a battlefield, at least from what I could tell from my stay at the Bastion. They could be summed up best in the phrase 'Live fast, die young'. The magma-like glob in my claws burned, and I dropped it in surprise. I'd been prepared for it to be hot, but _that_ hot? The head burst into cinders, as did the body along with the one next to it. The Ascendents were dead. I angled up, flying circles around Verthelion, who rose straight up. Calestrasza's signal started moving. Toward us.

"Um, Verthelion..."

"What?"

"My brood-mother, she's-"

"YOU!"

I screeched in panic. "Scatter!" That's exactly what I did. I dove, dodging Calestrasza's attack, skimming across the tree-tops. The cultists had been sent running, and the kaldorei were still trying to get past the river. A few of them spotted me and hurled glaives, which I managed to dodge, but not without one grazing the side of my body. I twisted up through the air, trying to dodge her attacks. A flash-back raced across my eyes, my mother in a large pit with her eggs, trying desperately to convince her...

A furnace blast of heat singed my tail. I bawled in panic and tried to speed up. Hazarding a glance back at her, I saw that she was breathing a continuous stream of flame, angling up to me. I knew I had to convince her; I couldn't fight her, nor would I if I could.

"Wait! Let me explain!"

She hesitated, cutting off the fire, but kept following me. "Seluria. I should have known." I swept up across the trees, weaving in and out across the taller ones. My brood-mother kept gaining on me, catching up. I was running out of time.

"We were _helping _you! Please, don't do this!"

"THAT DOESN'T MATTER! It was _your_ kind that told the cult where I was! It was you _monsters_ who killed my children!"

"THAT'S THE THING!"

Huge claws grabbed at my tail, pulling down. I screamed in panic, losing my height. I crashed through trees, branches smacked my face, and her claws moved forward. There was a deafening cacophony as she pummeled through the trees I crashed through, before I hit the ground, her claws holding me down. She eyed me, a murderous glint in her eyes. I heard a gurgling. "No, wait please I can explain! Just give me a chance!"

"And why would I do that? WELL?" She took a deep breath.

"Because you're my mother!" I blurted out.

That made her jerk her head back, the breath she had taken coming out. "What? You _dare_ claim to be related to me?"

"I - It's the truth! Please, you have to believe me!" Was it just me, or were her claws heating up?

"And why should I believe one controlled by the Old Gods?"

"W-we're not controlled!" Damn it Selriona, you can't afford to stutter! "We're just brainwashed is all! Please, please it's the truth."

"You say you're my _daughter. _Why would I believe that?"

What had I said in the nightmare? "When I was a whelp, I tried to hatch prematurely! You remember that happened, yes?"

Her claws surged with heat, starting to hurt. "How could I not? Nalestrasza was the first to try that, and that always shows how outgoing they will be." She looked back down at me. "So now you claim to know what I said. Go on. Tell me."

"You said 'Not yet. Not yet. A few more weeks, just wait!'. Please, your claws..." They were hideously hot, burning into my stomach.

"That's what... that's what I said." She looked back at me, and her heat subsided. "But then WHAT are you doing here? WHY are you going to Stormwind? Tell me, and I MIGHT just let you go."

"It's en route to the Highlands. We really are going to try and hide from the war there! Please, please don't kill me..." I didn't realize at the time, but I was trembling.

For a long time she just held me pinned, me not daring to meet her stare. Finally, she growled in her throat. "What is your name?"

"S-S-Selriona."

"Exactly. None of my children were to have that name. You're not my daughter." My heart sank. "I do believe you are not _their_ servant. You told the truth regarding the cult's attack, and that allowed me to prepare, not to mention your _aid_ in defeating them. But YOU." She thrust her head at me, snarling, making me cringe. "Are not my daughter. You're just some _abomination_ in her body. I won't stop you. Take Verthelo and get out of my sight," she spat at me. "Don't come back. And if you ever let me see you again..." She let that threat hang in the air and took off, making no effort to not push down on me in the process. Then she was gone, her signal heading away from Lor'danel to the cultist camp.

For a while I just laid there, recuperating from the injuries her claws and take off inflicted. They weren't severe, they were quite mild, in fact. The artifact could have healed me, but I couldn't bring myself to move. Calestrasza's words, my _brood-mother's_ words, had cut through me like an axe.

_You're not my daugher_. How could she say that to me?

_Some _abomination_ in her body._ That... why?

_Get out of my sight. Don't come back._ Why did she hate me?

_If you ever let me see you again..._ She would kill me. Titans, she _hated_ me. My own mother, knew who I was and...

My eyes started warming. I struggled to breathe normally.

_You're not my daughter. _I'd survived her wrath, and got her to believe me. So why had I still failed? I couldn't hold it in. I cried onto the ground. Why, why why? I'd failed. One of my worst fears. I'd come so close, _so close! _I didn't acknowledge the small wound on my side from the glaive, or the burns and bruises on my chest. Eventually, I heard the flapping of wings.

"Selriona! Are you alright?"

"Go away, Verthelion."

"What? You're hurt, I am not - "

"I said. Go. AWAY!" I turned over on my side, closing my eyes.

"Just tell me. What happened? I saw her grab you, then fly away. What - "

"She hates me. How long till sunset?"

"She hates you? I'm so - "

"Answer the question.

"An hour or so. We should be able to get back in that time."

"Let's go. I never want to come to this place every again." I pulled myself to my paws and soon after, feet. I took the disk off and pointed it at me. Let the memories fade. I fired a fireball into its back, the powerful conical blast healing my injuries in a heartbeat from so close. Verthelion led me back to Lor'danel, and after a lot of help from the mortals, I got across. The attack had done major damage; the inn was a pile of charred lumber, and several smaller buildings were ash. Multiple civilians were wounded, and there appeared to be fewer than before. People were rushing around trying to put out the few fires remained, and see if anyone got caught in the implosions. The sun set below the horizon. How long had I been out there, wallowing in despair?

He led me up the ramp to the hippogryph master, who was wrapping gauze around her left arm, before looking at us.

"Hello. We're here for our hippogryph to Rut'theran." She nodded, before walking over to one that was resting in a bail of hay. If I hadn't been in a downright horrid mood from my own mother saying she would kill me if she ever saw me again, they would have been impressive. Green feathers, horns, and the like. They all had saddles on them, with reins looping over their neck.

"You may saddle this one. And you," she said, turning to me. "Can take her." She pointed to another. I reluctantly climbed onto the saddle. Was this what Amanthe felt like when I took her to the plaguelands? "They are trained, and will take you right to the village. Just hold on. If you want to sleep, you can. They're very good." She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, the sound being a sharp flash of light in my dreary emotions. I got on the aerial beast, as did Verthelion with his. The night elf said a few words in Darnassian, and the hippogryphs took to the air, wings beating to my sides.

I laid down my head on mine, stifling sobs. My own mother...

The animal's muscles strained and relaxed under me, constricted then expanded. That had to be what it felt like to Amanthe. My mind swirled around to what Nalestrasza had told me.

_But you'll find out. Yes you will. You'll learn. And then you'll weep. _She was right. I did learn. She wasn't talking about me failing to tell Calestrasza; she meant what would happen once I finally did. I decided to finish her prediction. I wept into the green down, the magical disk around my neck doing nothing to warm me.

Verthelion flew next to me, silent. One with an Old God in their head, one with her Red self. One being driven insane, one being driven to a dual personality disorder, if at a slower pace.

Finally, I gained control. "We're alone."

"We are," he said in a melancholy voice, reduced to a whisper from the air. The bright star, which had started to dim, brightened up again. Elsewhere in the sky, the Blue Child and the White Lady had overlapped, signaling the Embrace. "We're the only ones who know."

"Everyone is against us. Our own flight, if they found out. The cultists there probably saw us; they'll tell others. The mortal defenders. The other flights. Titans, how did everything get to be like this? How come we're not strong enough to show them?"

"That's what we're going to do," My mate answered. "We're going to our home. We're going to lay low until we can go become adults, then we'll do just that. Then we'll be able to have influence."

"But influence to do _what?_ Save the rest of our flight? Even if we are two adults, they'll never listen to us. Hells, it was hard enough to convince you, and you're my best friend. What are we going to _do_? It's the two of us against the world."

"It is." I looked up at the Embrace, the dual disks of blue and white shining down on me. Verthelion continued. "Two twilight dragons, facing off against all of Azeroth. But we'll find a way through. We have to."

"Not all stories have a good ending, Verthelion. Most have the opposite."

"You're making it very hard to be optimistic, you know."

For a few moments the hippogryphs flew us through the silence-laden air. "Verthelion, we have a boat to catch tomorrow, and you can bet we're going to get ground-sick. I'm going to try to sleep."

"You do that. Try not to fall." I was already pretending to sleep. "Um, Selriona?" He waited, before sighing. "Typical." Soon enough, I stopped pretending.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**I am so sorry for the delay between chapters, but there's a reason. I get motivation to write any single chapter from daydreams about the chapter in question, and this is one of the chapters I forgot to plot out before chapter 24, so I haven't had time to 'motivate' myself for it by turning it over and over in my head repeatedly. Not to mention that my mind can only work so fast. **


	30. Chapter 30:Bored

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing this.**

* * *

><p>The flight to Rut'theran was long and boring. The dreary water between Darkshore and Teldrassil was virtually unchanging, and it was almost all that I saw. Sure, the enormous tree stump loomed in the distance, but as the laws of nature went, its size increased slowly since we were distant. I slept a good deal on the hippogryph, and woke up in a considerably better mood, right up until the point I remembered what had happened. Then I drooped, leaning forward onto the animal's neck. Verthelion was asleep next to me, the hippogryph's incredible balance keeping him up. I hadn't anything to do. I held up the artifact, the brass-colored chains going limp. The green leaves were a stark contrast to the gray fog in the distance. I took it off and held it at arm's length, pointed into the sky, and launched a fireball into it from a distance. True to my aim, it got absorbed into the metal, expelling a large blast of nature magic out of the glass, like the attack was displacing water. I held the grayed leaves to my face, a green tendril snaking into my skin. Now they blended in with the surroundings. I knew that only one fireball into the glass wouldn't do anything, but I didn't have anything else to do, so I brought fire out of my body, like the energy was seeping out of the small pores in my form's skin and coalescing.<p>

To their credit, the hippogryphs didn't do anything beyond a small rumble, a testament to their training. The fireball entered the glass, and like before, was absorbed smoothly. Right away, the leaves turned violet and smoldered. Surprised, I fired in another before it could seep out. The leaves burst into flames and the arching green tendrils vanished. The indigo flame inside the glass continued to bubble even after the leaves had vanished, but at a much slower rate than it should have. Then a violet filament extended into me, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the fires sped up.

All at once I realized what had happened. "Ah, no, no no don't!" But the twilight fires kept burning, and the filament stayed violet. I put it back on and beat my head on the animal's back. "No. No. No. No." I couldn't let anyone see it! Not like this! I held it up, looking at the boiling indigo fire beneath the glass. I resolved to let it wait, and see what happened. Over the course of a few hours, during which Verthelion stayed asleep, the flames sped up until, finally, the violet line vanished and stopped draining me. I groaned in despair. Nothing else to do, then. I put the loop of metal over my neck and firmly gripped the disk in my right hand. I pointed the disk at the ocean far below and launched a bolt of flame into it. A large ball of twilight fire flew out, and sailed into the gloomy seas. On impact with the water, a small explosion rocked the sea, maybe two meters across. The flames in the glass had frozen in place, and as it sucked twilight energy out of me, slowly sped up.

I groaned. What happened? Suddenly it stored and released twilight fire? I'd have to keep it hidden the entire boat trip. I manipulated my illusion, creating pockets for myself. I placed the artifact inside, and sealed the pocket hole. Wonderful. Not as tricky as I thought it would be. I relaxed, and let the hours roll by, forcing myself to sleep after an hour.

I woke up again in a good mood and, like before, became depressed the moment I remembered what had happened. Teldrassil was much larger than before, and I could now make out details on it even with the sun shining next to it, setting below the tree stump towered above anything I could see, a mountain in its own right. Branches the size of Deathwing covered in lichen branched off, dividing and twisting around and around in a coiled bramble of twigs. A small tunnel was within the brambles, and the coiled labyrinth itself didn't appear to extend closer than one hundred meters to the ocean. The hippogryphs dove through the tunnel, maneuvering between the branches and descending onto a wooden pier. A man came up and helped us down, before easing the flying animals into beds of straw to preen themselves.

Verthelion turned to him and kept eye contact. Apparently he was getting more comfortable around mortals. Exposure therapy, who would have thought? "Excuse me, but do you know when the boat for Stormwind is due to arrive?"

"Ah, it is due to arrive very soon. Better get a move on if you want to get on it."

"Thank you. Come on, Seluria. Let's go."

"Okay," I whispered dismally. I was still in a foul mood from my brood-mother's words. I would be for some time unless I found something to occupy my time.

The wooden planks gave out hollow thunks when I trudged along them. "How are you?"

"Abysmal. I can't believe she'd say that to me."

"You need something to take your mind off it."

I barked out a laugh. "Ha, yes. Ground-sickness."

"Clever. Exactly how bad is it?"

"First you get a build-up of energy, and it eventually reaches a point where you have to keep moving to ward off pain. Then eventually your body gives out, and you're unable to move, so you suffer a lot of the pain you have to move to avoid, but you can't since your body is in some sort of emergency shut-down."

"What? So we're going to become crippled?"

"No, that takes a little more than a month, and the boat should arrive in Stormwind by then. The winds are strong with the Cataclysm. But if it does, then after our bodies decide we're well enough to move, the physical pain goes away, but you feel terribly, terribly sick. Light burns, sound hurts, the world feels like it's spinning, that kind of thing."

"Oh. Lovely."

"But we probably won't have to deal with that. At least, I _hope_ not. I could barely roll over on my own, let alone get out of Stormwind."

"Oh _that's_ just great. Let's get going, the boat's getting away." He started into a sprint, which I followed him with. Contrary to his words, the massive human-designed boat was sitting still, nobody was moving anything, and the sails were down. Military ships were small and fast, so they could move with maximum speed, but this ship routinely traded supplies and transported noncombatants, so it would be well stocked.

"Oh yeah, this boat's getting away all right."

"Oh shut up." We slowed to a jog, and then a walk, as we got to the ship. The polished yellow floorboards were cleaned of anything they had picked up on the last trip, and I could smell large quantities of salted fish below. Along with something else I couldn't make out from all the fish, but it smelled like meat. We got on, and quickly set out to find somebody below deck. Sure enough, one of the night elves sat on a bench, holding onto a beam.

So many people, coming into and out of my life. The dwarven patrol that found me in Dun Morogh, Catarina, Kolkna, Alysra, Sentinel Moonwing, and so many others. What if Amanthe was doomed to be one of those? Coming to briefly touch my life, but then never seeing her again?

I cleared my throat. "Excuse me, is there anything we have to do to ride this boat?"

She looked up at me, green eyes dull. "Sure. Go _away from me_ and talk to the captain in her quarters. Head count. Besides that, nothing. It's a civilian vessel. Why, never ridden one before?"

"Nope, never."

She sniffed. "Figures."

Verthelion leaned over next to my ear. "Looks like _someone's_ social."

I chuckled, turning away from the woman, who just continued to stare forward, like she were looking for a person that would never come, a memory that would always be forgotten. The labyrinth of corridors spiraled around us, rooms with doors, the smell of the food stores increasing and decreasing. With the help of several ship-hands, traders, and other civilians, we found our way to the captain. Her dark complexion was made more pronounced by the cabin's lack of natural light, and her black hair did nothing to brighten her features. Oddly enough, her green vest was the same color of the night elf's eyes. Then again, kaldorei often had green eyes.

"Greetings. I am Captain Angelina Soluna. State your business."

"Um, we're civilians," I told her.

"Understood. Two." She strode over to her desk, which like the rest of the room, was fairly nondescript. She pulled out a drawer, a book, a pen. After we'd been entered, she put back the pen, but continued to look over her book, flipping through pages. "You're in room 3L. Sorry to cut this short, but we're going to be setting sail soon." With that she walked out, and walked up a set of stairs.

"Ooookay then. That was kind of terse," Verthelion whispered in an awed voice. "At least she didn't ask for ID."

"Let's go find our room. This is going to take a long, _long_ time."

"You're telling me. Okay. So, 3L. I'm guessing three is the level. But is it third from the bottom or top?"

"Only one way to find out. Let's get going."

After much mucking about through the corridors, stairs, deck, and turns, we arrived at 3L, on the lowest level. The room was roughly five meters on a side, with a bunk bed, and no doors. I traced a finger along the wooden frame, and sighed. "This is going to be unbelievably boring. I'm going to go looking around for something to do."

"You do that. I'm going to try to sleep."

"Didn't you sleep on the way over here?"

"Yes. It helps pass the time."

I shrugged. "Well, can't argue that." Verthelion stiffened as he climbed into the higher bed.

"You don't mind if I take this one, do you?"

"Not at all, why?"

"The Old God told me you did."

"There has to be a way. I'll go see if there's anything that might help."

"Alright." I turned out and left him to sleep. After more aimless wandering through the innards of the boat, it started to move. The ground lurched beneath my feet as the boat moved through the waves slowly, then picked up speed as wind blew through its sails. How long had we been wandering the boat? The growl in my stomach told me, a long time. The boat's rocking soon made itself part of my walking; it wasn't more unstable than flying.

I found myself in a sort of library. It was a hemispherical room, with six three-meter tall bookshelves turning it into a hexagon with a domed roof. I sighed. Nothing else to do, and I wasn't intent on forcing myself to sleep. I created an opening in my clothing and stuck my hand into the pocket, feeling the shadowy fire beneath the disk's glass dome. Damn it. I let it go and sealed back up the pocket, and walked along the shelves. I glanced fleeting looks over the titles printed onto their bindings. To be honest, I hadn't expected anything to catch my eye. It wasn't until my eyes flew along a thick tree trunk of a book titled 'Introductory guide to magic' that I found myself ripping it out and finding a seat on the floor. I opened the first page.

_To my wife and kids, and my mentor, all of whom without I would have burned Dalaran down several times over. _

It was published by some archmage, but I didn't bother reading his name_. _I turned the page, and came up to a table of contents.

"What is magic, what does magic mean for me, ah, so you have magical potential." I turned to the indicated page, page 67.

_The first thing you need to understand is that if you have magical potential, you have arcane magic potential. If the various schools of magic were paint, with the fire magics being red, shadow magics being violet, and so on, then arcane would be the result of mixing them all together. Fire would cancel out frost, light cancel out dark, and nature cancel out corruption(which despite popular belief, does vary from dark magics in a very slight fashion). What is left is the arcane. Perhaps a better analogy would be to think of arcane magic as raw ore, and the various schools as metals and gems extracted from it. Simply put, the arcane is pure magic, so if you have magic potential, you can, to a certain degree, wield the arcane._

I took a moment to let that seep in. So when my magic was released from my body and I could wield it beyond twilight portals and illusions, I would also be able to use the arcane somewhat. I dove back into the book which, curiously enough, held my attention. I turned the pages, reading through about the basics of energy manipulation, which I could store for later use.

_Every individual has a set skill for magic from the moment of birth. The first uses of magic of any kind will be difficult, but as the spell is used repeatedly, it will ease, until the caster has reached their full potential. There is no way through training to increase one's potential, merely how closely one lives up to it, however there are magical artifacts designed to temporarily increase one's full power, or even as long as they carry it. It should be noted this is very similar to intellect and strength training; everyone has a set potential, and the going gets easier as one approaches it. However, as with strength training, it is more than possible to over-exert oneself, especially when it concerns one's mana, or their store of magical energy that replenishes itself from fluids. When one continues to call on magical energies after their stores are depleted, their body will metabolize their water into mana, causing dehydration. In severe cases where the 'mana pool' is empty and a very draining spell is cast, it is possible to instantly drop dead from lack of -_

"Nice to see you, how've you been?"

"AH!" I jumped in the air, aiming a hand at the noise. I spread my fingers around in a cone shape, small fire coming out of them and coalescing into a central ball of fire.

"Hey, hey easy!" The gnome stepped out of my line of fire. "Honestly, Selriona! Haven't we talked long enough for you to know my voice and my nature?"

"Don't _do_ that, Chromie!" I let the fireball dissipate. "You almost gave me heart failure!"

"Sorry! So, what are you reading?" I held up the book, and Chromie smiled. "Ah, so this is where Selriona gets her beginnings?"

"My _what_?" I sat back down.

"Her - ah, um." She rubbed her chin. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Hehe." Her form flickered. "Oh well, it doesn't look like it's going to do any harm."

"What are you here for? What do you want?"

"What? Can't I drop by for a friendly visit?"

"Since when does a Bronze stop by for 'friendly visits'?"

"Ever since you and I got on good terms with each ot - Oh silly me! That happens in your future, doesn't it? It gets so hard to keep track of now and then."

"Alright then. Why are you _really_ here? Is it about the Infinite?"

Chromie frowned. "I'm actually not here about that. This really _is_ a friendly visit. Of course, seeing as how you aren't friendly with me yet is going to make that more complicated." She cupped her chin in one hand. "Didn't actually think of that..."

"Well?"

"Well, I guess you deserve to know what happened with Ellemayne and the others, right?"

"Yes, I do."

"Right then. They found their way to Aeonus, and forced him to retreat. After that, they went back to their own time, after I told them you succeeded. Except for Amanthe. She went through a portal and - "

"I alrea - "

"I'm sorry, but there's no easy way to put this, but she died."

Was the world _trying_ to rub it in? "I know she died," I snapped at her. "Why didn't you stop it?"

"I couldn't. She _had_ to die, just like I _have_ to end up being one of the Infinite. I literally _could not_ reach her."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better." I picked up the tome, and opened to the page I was on. "I'm going to keep reading. Not like I have much else to do on this boat."

_Every individual... intellect and strength training... instantly drop dead from lack of water in their bodies. A key point of using magic is to drink __lots__ of fluids._

"I'm sorry about what happened." She paused, while I kept reading. _Having magical potential is not enough. Potential is simply the raw power you have. All must work to shape their intellect to be able to mold the magic into desired spells. Otherwise, you might blow up something important. _"I owe you a favor."

"Do you."

"It's kind of funny. To me, it looks like you did me a favor, so now I owe you, but to you, it'll look like I do you a favor, so you owe me."

"Is this going anywhere?"

"Yeah, sure. Just give me a moment." She flickered again. "Okay." She reached into her robes, pulling out two flat blue tablets the size of her gnomish fingertips from a pocket she shapeshifted into existence. "Take one of these and swallow it. It'll keep you from getting ground-sick for a week, so take it when you're getting really sick. Give the other to Verthelion."

"Wait, so there's actually a _cure_ for ground-sickness?"

"Not anymore. A brilliant blue dragon invented it before the War of the Ancients, but the creator and the creations were all lost in the Sundering."

"So why can't you just bring them across the Sundering to the future?"

She shook her head. "It's not meant to be. If anyone asks, I didn't give you any cure."

I sighed. "Well, thanks, I guess. I owe you one."

"Told you it's funny."

"Hey, wait."

"Yeah?"

"The Infinite. Have they given up on me?"

"They have. You passed the critical point of saving Verthelion. After that, they won't be able to interfere with you."

"Why not? Seems pretty simple."

"It's not. Think of it this way." She placed a finger on the ground, leaving a glowing golden point. "Let's say your entire universe is this one point. How many ways can you move?"

"None."

"Exactly. So a point has zero dimensions. Now." She put her finger back on it, and drew a straight line. "If your universe was this line, where could you move?"

"Um, left and right?"

"Exactly. Left and right can be thought of as left and anti-left, so it's really one direction. One dimension is a line." She put a finger on each endpoint and pulled them to the side, leaving a square. "Now, if your world was this square..."

"Two dimensions."

"Good. Now, we're three-dimensional. If there was a living being in two dimensions, how would it see other two-dimensional beings?"

I thought about it for a while. "It would see a straight line for everything."

She chuckled. "You told me you'd catch on fast. Now, it can only see one side of other two dimensionals, right?"

"Right?"

"But we, being in the third dimension, can see all their sides AND all their internal organs all at once, can't we?"

"Yes," I answered skeptically. Where was she going with this?

"Now, say these creatures tried to build a barrier to keep you, a three dimensional being, out. Could they do that?" She drew a circle in the corner of the square, the barrier I was supposed to penetrate.

"Easily." I stuck my finger in.

"Good. Now, time is the fourth dimension. We Bronze dragons are three dimensional, save for Nozdormu, but able to move through the fourth, so we are, in effect, able to do this in the real world, as are the Infinite. I saw all your insides before coming here, like I were floating above a two dimensional being. I could see it, but it couldn't see me."

"That's disturbing."

She shrugged. "Meh, you get used to it. Now, following this pattern, is it possible for the Infinite to be sealed out of any place?"

"No, it's not."

"Ah, but you're forgetting the laws of causality. If I touch a point in a line, that impact won't ripple out to every point to the right. But if I mess with the fourth dimension, everything in the forward direction is influenced. That makes it, ah, special. It is possible to seal someone out. Mainly, you saving Verthelion affected time in such a way that your destiny _will_ come to pass, and as interference could prevent that, it became literally impossible for the Infinite to mess with either of you."

"Oh. Good to know." So I wouldn't have to worry about the Infinite. Thank the Titans.

"Yup, well, um, goodbye. See you in my past." Then she vanished in a bloom of golden light. For a while I just sat there. What? So, I was on good terms with Chronormu in the future? Huh. I delved back into the book, intrigued by its secrets. Several others passed through, reading books for a few minutes before leaving, and I finished reading the current chapter, and the basic manipulation of arcane and corruption magic, before I noticed that I was very, very hungry. I pulled myself to my feet, but almost collapsed right away. How long had I been sitting? I slowly flexed the muscles inside, getting the blood flowing again, and grimacing as feeling came back, along with the buzzing, stabbed-by-needles pain. I lifted myself, and put pressure on my legs.

"Ah, ah, okay. That's it. Getting better." I sighed, and made my way back to 3L, fighting off the sleep reflex. It must've been late, or the atmosphere of the boat.

Verthelion was, true to his word, sleeping. My stomach growled at me irately. How long had I been there? I curled up on the bed, and closed my eyes. I didn't notice the artifact was still in my pocket, or the rocking of the ship on the waves, the smell of preserved meat, or the fact that I had taken the book with me.

* * *

><p>I am now convinced that boats are sentient beings of pure evil that take pleasure in torturing helpless dragons.<p>

The boat didn't help my ground-sickness in any form, in fact it even encouraged it with the claustrophobic conditions below decks. The 'gentle' swaying on the sea made it feel like I was trapped in a box being tilted back and forth. What's that, you say? Go on deck? That doesn't help. The claustrophobic environment doesn't exist above deck, but the smell of the sea is just wretched from so close, especially once you've passed the murky, stagnant waters of Darkshore. The smell is so bad that we really can't stay there for more than a few minutes. A mere week into the trip Verthelion and I were as ground-sick as if we'd been flightless for fourteen days. I'd speed-walked the entire length of the boat several times, and even had counted some of the boards in a room, left it, came back, and resumed where I left off. Three-hundred eighty-two for the main hallway.

I'd never eaten fish before, and I never will again. The oily texture, the sea-smell, those things are more revolting than snakes. The only consolation for the fish and various plants we ate was the other type of meat, the one who's smell I couldn't quite pick out; boar. Verthelion, upon tasting it, agreed with me that boar is the greatest type of meat on all of Azeroth.

I kept reading the tome, but as my ground-sickness got worse, I took to bringing it with me while I traversed the length, width and height of the vessel, reading it on the go and colliding into a wall more than once. Several times I wondered if it would just save me a lot of trouble to simply fly instead, long distances be damned. Several medics came up to us, asking if we were all right. Our answer was the same; we didn't like boats, which was true enough.

Slowly the unread pages in the tome dwindled, until they ran out one week in. I couldn't practice any of it, not yet, but I somehow managed to commit every part of it to memory. And never once did I take out the artifact.

Ten days in, I couldn't take it anymore. I took the pill given to me by Chromie, also giving the other to Verthelion, who was so grateful he didn't even inquire where I got them. Around that time we were in the northern latitudes, planning to sling-shot around the Maelstrom's edges to send us flying to Stormwind. One third of the way there. Damn.

Twelve days in, I could see the ripples of the massive whirlpool in the seas. I regurgitated into them soon after. Luckily, the cure had worked, and all my ground-sickness was gone, so I could sit still for more than two seconds. The Embrace had long-since passed, and I still felt like clawing my eyes out from boredom.

But however badly I took it, Verthelion took it ten times worse. Sure, he didn't get any sicker than me, but he didn't have anything to read to occupy his time, and he hadn't gone as long a period of time without flying as I had. He became short-tempered, terse, and when he looked at anything his eyes focused like they were looking through the object. I asked him several times if it was the Old Gods, but it wasn't. He just couldn't handle being on a boat. And I couldn't blame him. The psychological effects were accumulating on me, as well.

So imagine my surprise when the boat stopped only thirteen days into the voyage! I didn't catch too much about why we were stopping; something about underestimated fruit counts. But Verthelion was the first one off the boat, myself a close second. The island was completely tropical, not a surprise for something so close to the equator. Lush green trees with various species of coconuts, an apple-like fruit in the bushes. The air had a crisp, clean smell to it, and all the _space_! Within moments we vanished within the growth, the scent of the boat gone. I jumped over a shallow, bubbling stream, and Verthelion slipped between a knot of two trees.

"This is SO much better than a musty old boat!" He yelled at me.

"I agree!"

The trees ahead of me faded out, showing the dawn sky beyond. The ground below my feet vanished, and we both fell into a large chasm. I let my illusion go, extended my wings and pulled into a soar. Somehow the artifact had gone from my sealed pocket to around my neck, but I wasn't complaining. Now that I wasn't falling, I took a good look at the chasm. It was impossibly wide, a half kilometer if I had to guess, and just as deep. Water flowed into it from several rivers, creating a cascade of waterfalls that then leveled off in a lake, which, since it didn't overflow and had no openings, must've drained out underground. Vines grew far down below into it. An uncharted island within the Great Sea. Or, rather not uncharted, but not really inhabited.

I laughed, doing a loop in the air, with Verthelion 'threading the needle'.

"What's with your artifact?" I looked down at the disk, still holding eternal indigo fire beneath it.

"I don't know. While we were flying I blasted it's energy out and when I threw my fire into it, this happened. It's stayed that way since."

"What if someone sees it?"

"I'm keeping it in a closed off pocket. Nobody is going to see it."

"You can actually _do_ that with your illusion?"

"Easily, why?"

"It's just, ah, nothing. Let's get the most out of this. We need to head back soon; we don't know when they are leaving."

I nodded in agreement, spinning myself in midair. "Hmm, true. But at least we're out of that horrible thing for now."

"Ugh, I agree. We can't arrive in Stormwind soon enough."

I laughed. "Nope. Come on, let's make a few rounds." We took off out of the bowl, sailing a large circle around the two-kilometer island while being careful to avoid the boat's vicinity, until Verthelion judged it time to go back.

Getting on the boat, I took one more look back at the open wilderness, and moaned in despair. Seventeen more days. At least. How would I _survive_ that?

At least I had boar.

* * *

><p>Seventeen days after setting out from Teldrassil the cure's effects faded. Verthelion and I were both nervous as to what that meant; according to the ship's crew, we were still roughly two weeks from Stormwind, and we would get incredibly ground-sick in that time. We tried to burn off as much energy as we could by obtaining swords and sparring, but that only went so far. On the plus side I'd say we would be fairly decent at defending ourselves in mortal forms if we had to.<p>

Twenty days in we hit a small storm, brewed by the weather instabilities caused by the Cataclysm. The sails went down, and everyone went below deck. Said deck was completely drenched, and by day twenty-one, fungus was starting to hold it, and from then on the mortals were scrambling to get ahead of the spores. The slimy white mold spread at an exponential rate in spite of the salt water treatment, creeping rapidly while the top was visible and regenerating overnight if the roots remained, and those went so deep it wasn't possible to pull them out. All they could do was slow down the spread, but the conclusion was inevitable; the mold would grow, the roots sucking in the wood's essence, until the ship crumbled to driftwood. Still, the smell was horrific, and every now and then spores would be emitted when the mold was removed, puffing out like a cloud, but most of them died attempting to take root, so it wasn't possible to see where the new patch was until it was visible. Luckily, it wasn't anything toxic, just horrid smelling to ward of predators, but since it resisted salt water, that indicated something unnatural about it. Luckily, it wouldn't be our problem much longer.

Day twenty-four, we were out of our minds, being as ground-sick as if we had been stuck for twelve days. And although the short flight had done us good, it wasn't enough to clear the boredom and mental pain that had built up. The mold had consumed roughly a quarter of the upper deck, and some splotches were growing below, not to mention the ones who's roots were still in and were regrowing. We both speed-walked around, again and again. I had taken to messing with the mortals, and by the end of the trip, several passengers were certain they had left that shoe _right there_. Before taking the cure, I had counted the boards in a hallway, and now I had designated names for each, I was so bored. And I'm pretty confident Verthelion had names for them _and_ family relations. It was getting absurd.

Finally, FINALLY, the boat pulled to the harbor. We were both on deck the whole time, watching as the ship-hands put down anchors, tied off the ship, and lowered the sails. Merchants pulled their wagons out to the pier, filled with miscellaneous foods, weapons, goblin-made 'dragon-be-gone' (Which I can tell you with a somewhat expert opinion, does nothing), and several other things I couldn't recognize from the way they were jumbled together. After that, we sprinted out, the ground-sickness and state of mind horrifically amplifying our energy.

"Okaygood, let's go." Verthelion started to run, but I held him back, shifting my weight from one foot to the other to keep moving.

"You don'tknow the way out, Ido. Besides, there's one stopwe need to make first."

He snarled at me. "What could we possiblyneed to stop for? Whocould have something we need?"

"A friendof mine. It'll only be aminute, and I know the way." I started into a walk through the docks, slowly as not to draw attention. Weaving between the guards and the civilians, we quickly got out and sprinted through the canals, desperately trying to clear the salty sea smell from our noses. The houses turned golden, and the shining spire of the Cathedral came into view. Verthelion slipped his hand into mine.

"It's all right. Theywon't hurt you. They don't have anywayof knowing," I reassured him.

He let go as we turned a corner. "Thanks. I've just neverbeen around so _many_before."

"You getused to it, trust me." We turned a corner and dashed across a bridge, hardly exhausting ourselves. The houses turned blue, but if I was right, that wasn't our destination. Several turns later, we were deep in Old Town. I searched my memory, wracking it to try and remember where his house had been, but it turned out I was right. I rapped on the door, bouncing on my feet to keep moving. The door opened and Samuel walked out.

"Selriona, who'sthis mortal?"

Samuel's eyes snapped to me. "_Selriona?_" he hissed. I nodded. "Aaaah..." He fell backwards, unconscious, with a slight thud.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	31. Chapter 31:Traitor

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing this.**

**Quick edit: When their wordsare pushed togetherlike this, it's not an error. It's to show how they're talking faster due to ground-sickness.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Samuel lay on the ground, unmoving save for the soft rising and falling of his chest that indicated he hadn't died when he passed out. His right hand twitched.<p>

"Ah, great. Help memove him in. Grab hislegs, I've got his arms." I stepped over Samuel, grabbing him by the wrists. "Onetwo three, lift!" Samuel's body left the ground, and we pulled him into his house. "Shut the door." Verthelion, through surprising coordination, closed the door with his feet. Huh. We hauled Samuel into a chair, and stood back from him.

"Who ishe?"

"That's Samuel, remember? Themage I told youabout."

"Whydid it faint when it sawyou?"

"WishI knew. I'dbetter wake him up sohe can answer."

"And how are yougoing to do that?" He started pacing around the room.

I smirked. "Oh, I havean idea." I stepped up next to Samuel's ear and whispered, "Eggnog."

His eyes flew open and he launched himself off the chair, almost headbutting me in the process, looking around like a wild animal. "WHERE? WHERE?"

Verthelion put his head in his palm, shaking his head even as he continued to pace around the room.

Samuel turned his head to me. "That wasn't ni-i-ah. You're dead."

My head jerked back of its own accord. That hadn't been what I'd been expecting. "I'm_what_?"

"Dead," Samuel repeated, earning a growl from Verthelion.

"Whywould I be dead?"

"I saw you attacked by the air patrols!" He placed his hands to his temples, elbows spread out in two triangles. "No way you could've made it out." He lowered his hands. "Amanthe - If you're alive, then you have to know, how is she?"_ Dead. _"I mean, how was she the last time you saw her?"

_Being cremated._ "Good, she joined the ArgentCrusade."

"Oh, that's good." Samuel... worried about Amanthe? He always annoyed the hells out of her. Then again, it appeared mortal siblings did that a lot. "How did you get out? I mean, it shouldn't have been possible, what with security the way it is."

"I'm a fastflyer."

Verthelion chuckled from his corner. "She is. Ican vouch for that."

"Fair enough. You want something to eat? I've got fish-"

A resounding "_NO!_" from both of us.

"Okay, okay, sheesh! What, are you two allergic to fish?"

"It tastes_horrible_, Samuel," I informed him.

"Oh, does it? Hmm. Fine, I have some, uh, give me a moment." He reached up to the shelves lining his abode. Inside, I could see the glimmer of ice shards. "Okay, so I have bacon, cheese, some eggs..."

"The baconwill do," my mate called out.

"Right. You know, Amanthe told me about you."

"Shedid?" we both asked.

"Oh yeah." He pulled out a dozen bacon strips and set them on some plates, giving it to me. Verthelion just looked at it, before picking it off the plate. "Well, enough catching up. What are you stopping by for? I'm guessing it's not just to talk."

I inhaled several trips of bacon before remembering to breathe. "Actually, therewas something I want to askyou about. You'rea mage, right?"

Samuel narrowed his eyes. "Of course I am!" He held up his hand, small tendrils of frost snaking over his skin. "I'm insulted that you should ask." He let the frost dissipate and pouted like a whelp.

"I... sortof found this artifact in Darkshore." I opened the pocket and pulled out the artifact, still rolling with indigo flame. "Iwas wondering if you knewwhat it does." I tossed it to him, and he caught it by its chain.

"I have an idea. Gonna have to examine it a little, though. Till then, make yourselves at home." He finished talking as he walked up the stairs.

"So, that wasSamuel?"

"Yes. He's a biteccentric at times, buthe's a mage, so he shouldbe able to figure out what myartifact is."

"He'd betterhurry. We're not getting anyless ground-sick, and I'mnot too keen on beingseperate with the Old God, whatwith and all." He ripped into another slice of bacon, still pacing.

"Well, he'll get it done." I swallowed another slice of the meat, leaving me with none. "Whatdo you think of Stormwindso far?"

"Toomany mortals."

"I heard that!" came Samuel's muffled voice from upstairs, resulting in Verthelion going rigid, temporarily halting his incessant back-and-forth motion. He growled, before resuming. I tapped my finger on the table, keeping the lack of motion from getting to me.

"Soyou hauled me allthe way over here, delayingour flying, to know how that magicaldisk of yours works."

"Well... yes. ButIjust _have_ to know!" Verthelion stiffened for a moment, but said nothing. "The Old God again?" I asked in Draconic, so as not to worry Samuel.

He nodded, temporarily halting. "It said that youcare more about the artifactthan about me."

That one hit home. I had prioritized the artifact's identification over Verthelion's withdrawal. How could I respond to that? "I, I..." I found my voice. "I don't care more about the artifact than you. It's just, I've dealt with ground-sickness. I know what we're getting into. It won't be bad for a while yet. I'm sick too, you know."

"Howmuch time?"

"Maybe a week."

"Aweek! Will yourmortal friend finish with that artifact by then? I'm not eagerto stay here anylonger than we must."

"Definitely. It can't be thatcomplicated."

"It'd betternot be. I don't knowabout you, but ground-sickness is just_terrible_."

"Huh, really? Itshould only get bad later."

"Well I don'tfeel nauseous like how youmentioned, but the constant motionis irritating."

I started pacing as well, but soon enough, there was a deafening explosion from right above us, and a 'CRAP!' from a certain mage. We bolted upstairs, Verthelion stumbling a little on them, into Samuel's small study. Dark blue fire clung to the walls in small patches, vials with blue liquid in them bubbled aggressively, and smoke billowed. The artifact lay face-fown in the corner of the room, violet tendrils sucking in some of the fire. Samuel blocked the doorway, directing streams of water mixed with ice on the largest patches. Luckily, the fire didn't spread as much as it could have with the artifact draining it, and momentarily the flames were put out, though the floorboards were blackened and in some places there was a hole going straight down.

I let out a long whistle. "What happenedhere? Did you activateit?"

Samuel turned around, and I could see some of his blonde hair was singed. How had he managed to not be incinerated in the explosion? "Yeah, I did." He turned around to the artifact, holding out a hand. After a moment of silence he let a spear of frost fly, hitting the ground behind the artifact, the explosion sending it skidding to us. He reached down and gingerly held it up, two of the recharging tendrils snaking into Verthelion and I.

"So, whatisit?" I asked.

"Oh, it's a type of magical instrument called a capacitor. I should know, I have one, but it's a lot less powerful. Yours must be some kind of family heirloom. I'll show you." Samuel motioned for us to follow him and went downstairs, fiddling through the shelves where he kept food until he pulled out a small thumb-sized octahedron, half glass, half green metal. Inside the glass clean orange and red fires burned, looping through flares and tiny contained prominences. "Yours contains twilight fire, but mine has regular. Although, it can't hold nearly has much energy as that one."

"How do theywork?" asked Verthelion before I could.

"Well, they work via 'polarities'. They orient towards a specific type of magic and contain it and release it. If you want to change the polarity, you have to feed different magic into its glass. If you feed the same energy, it will just recharge. Go ahead, try it on yours." I did what he told me, placing a hand over the slow-moving twilight fire and letting my flames flow into the glass. The fire sped up very quickly, and soon the tendrils vanished.

"Itworked."

"Yep. To release it you just need to feed a spell into the magic. The energy contained will copy the spell as best it can. So if I put a cone of cold into this, it will try to replicate it as best it can with fire. If I hurled, say, a polymorph into it... I'd rather not think about that. These things are usually used to give mages a bit of flexibility. I'm good with frost magics, but if I need to burn something, I can easily do that with this thing, rather than worrying about adjusting heat gradients or the conjuring of fuel and all that." He eyed my artifact. "Why _is_ yours oriented to twilight fire?"

"Itwas an accident. It hadnature magic before."

"Oh. You want me to fix that?"

"Whatdo you mean 'fix it'?" Verthelion asked.

"Well, it's usually a bad idea for a capacitor's polarity to be the same energy they usually use. Otherwise the moment you use a spell the device will drain some of the spell's energy. I can't use nature magic, though, so it'll be something else."

"Oh," we both said in comprehension.

"The capacitor will always drain the closest source for its energy. Mine's fire, so it will suck the heat out of anything nearby, causing them to cool. If it were frost the opposite would happen, and the arcane permeates everything, so the device will drain that."

"Can it be used foranything else?" Verthelion asked.

"Oh sure. I'll show you. Selriona, hand it to me." Hesitating a little, I did.

"Areyou going to blowit up _again_?"

"No, no." He turned the metal to his hand, and breathed in deeply. "One thing capacitors can be used for is extra power. I have mana, and if I move it away from one spot in my body, like this..." I didn't see any change in him, but the artifact's metal started to glow violet. "Then the energy in the capacitor will flow into me, and I can use it." Sure enough, gouts of twilight fire flew out and started to circle around his hand, and after three seconds the mage's hand was covered in twilight fire, racing around his hand. He winced. "Damn, is that what it feels like? It's_ creepy_." He shuddered, the motion causing some of the fire to fly off, before rejoining the mass. "I can't hold onto it forever, but if I weaved it into, say, a lance made of ice, it will be quite odd." As if to prove his point, a jagged spear of ice formed in his other hand, the fire he had absorbed from the artifact - my artifact - flying to the spear and coating it. He swerved his hand, the spear moving with it, floating between his fingers.

I jumped to the side. "Don't point itatme!"

"Right, sorry!" The spear melted, the fire vanishing. "So, what do you want the polarity to be? I can do arcane, frost or fire."

I thought about it. Frost would be too counteractive to my flames, but it might help me cause some thermal shock. Fire, on the other hand, could cause incredible destruction. But arcane, when I was an adult, could be manipulated so much. And what had that book said? Arcane was pure magic. "Arcaneplease."

"Yep, sure, give me a moment. It's always easier to change the polarity if its energies are depleted." He placed the glass into his hands, and closed his eyes. Small purple and blue explosions puffed along his hand, making him sag with each one. After five, he took his hand away. "Right," he wheezed. "That should do it. I'm going to go down to the Trade district to buy some cider. I'm guessing you're going to be going?"

"Yeah, weneed to go to the Highlands."

"Which ones and why?" Samuel smirked through dry lips. _A key point of using magic is to drink lots of fluids. _

Verthelion answered him. "Twilight highlands, andbecause our cave isthere."

"Ah, I see." Samuel smirked, but said nothing. I still don't know what the smirk was about. "Well, goodbye." We started to turn to leave, when Samuel called my name. "Selriona, thanks for telling me about Amanthe. I've been worried sick about her. Do you know where she is?"

"LastI saw her, Mount Hyjal." But she would survive. How else would she have a future self?

"Thanks. See you around, it was nice seeing you again."

"The feeling'smutual." We turned out the door, when Samuel appeared infront of us in small flash of blue. He gasped, then continued walking, turning towards the Trade District. For a while we followed him, before changing paths to leave the city. The guards allowed us to leave; it would be entering again that would cause trouble. Luckily, neither of us had any intention, at least I didn't. I looked at my artifact again. Where there had once been vibrant leaves and twilight flame was now a sheath of violet and teal energy, emerging from the center, spreading out, and dissipating once it hit the edges. _My_ capacitor.

I spread a hand along it, feeling the slight resonance given off by it. "Let'sfly. We've got aways to go to theHighlands."

"Wedo. Race you?"

I smiled. "Certainly. Justone thing first." I released my illusion, straining to bring up the magic for a portal and to open it. Finally, it did. "Allright, let's go." I stepped through it, followed by the still-human Verthelion.

"Goodidea. We'll be fasterthis way." His illusion rippled and fell from him like water. "So, we'regoing home."

"Atlong last, weare." I crouched and jumped into the air, catching the dead currents of the twilight realm, shadows shifting and warping around me like water. My excess energy fled, and no doubt Verthelion's as well. We flew rapidly over the dead ground, the trees in another realm.

"So, a capacitor."

I got an inexplicably wide grin on my fangs. "Yes. Arcane magic. I can't _wait_ to see how I can use that." I flicked my head, causing the disk to fly up. I nailed it with a fireball, causing its power to fly out. It came out as two bolts of blue and violet magic, twirling around each other in a tight loop as they flew ahead, leaving behind the sharp stench of ozone. They flew into a small rock and exploded, the rock flying off with a notable burn on it. As the artifact fell back down, I noticed that the arcane magics below the glass had gone gray, and small silver/blue tendrils snaked into the air all around it, slowly saturating it. "And imagine when I'll be able to _control_ that. Manipulate it, not just release it in a blast. The possibilities..."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We still need to survive to adulthood." He looked to the north. "Shouldn't be be trying to go _around_ the Burning Steppes? What, with the lack of water?"

"Ah, um, yes, we should. Forgot about that." I turned myself around sharply, heading west, and Verthelion almost slammed into my tail-club.

"Watch it! You almost got me there."

"Sorry, it's not my fault you can't turn."

"Can't - ! You just pulled a ninety-degree - !" He let out a defeated sigh. "So, where are we going?"

"The Redridge mountains. From there, we go north. There's not much water in the Steppes though, so we'll need to talk to the orcs in Redridge."

"Think they'll give us water?"

"Maybe, if we convince them." I slowed down, letting Verthelion pull up next to me. "We can think of a plan when we get there. For now, let's just fly."

"Sounds like a plan." For a while we kept flying, the barren landscape flowing away below me. After about an hour, Verthelion decided we should stop to drink. As we descended, a shudder wracked his body.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." He paused. "Come on, let's get hydrated."

"Sounds like a plan."

I walked up to the lake, looking over at a large rock. I looked down. I remembered that rock. This was the lake I drank from when going to Redridge the first time. I dipped in my snout, taking deep gulps before I had to breathe. I stole a glance at Verthelion. He seemed... changed. Suddenly. It wasn't there before the flight here, but there it was now.

"You seem different, Verthelion."

He looked up from his patch of water. "How so?"

"You have this feel of confidence and authority around you. Like you know how to take charge, and it appeared so _suddenly_."

"Really?" He paused, seeming to consider. "How long have I been like that?"

"I just noticed it, why?"

"Because, to be honest, you seem a little different too, but it's been like that for a while, I think since right before we met the Naaru, when we crashed into the river."

"Really? Different how?"

"Some sort of power around you. _Magically_ powerful."

"Huh. I _have_ been taking an interest in magic, haven't I?"

He nodded. "I'm guessing that's the sign for us getting closer to adulthood. Pallasion told me that it happened to him sometime after the halfway point to being an adult, scared the hells out of him. He did seem different, too, stronger, but not like you."

"This is so odd." I chuckled. "Well then, guess I know the answer."

"Answer to what?"

"A while ago, at the Bastion, you asked what I would do when I was an adult, since I wouldn't be able to fly like I can now." I grinned mirthfully. "I said I might get a new fascination with crushing stuff. Well, now we know it's going to be magic. Shame I can't practice _now_."

"Hmm... or maybe you can."

"What?"

"There are some drakes who can use magic, maybe they just tried to use magic for a long, long time until they finally could?"

"Hmm, I'll try. But let's just focus on getting back home first."

He chuckled. "Agreed," he said, before dipping his mouth back into the lake, and I followed his example.

I pulled back out, taking a gasp of air. "So, how are we going to convince the orcs to give us water? They've seen me before, and while I don't think they'll remember me, I'd rather not push it since we might _die_ if we do."

"Well, how did you convince them last time? And, speaking of that, what last time?"

"Well, after I escaped from Stormwind with Amanthe, I sort of promised her I'd take her to the plaguelands, where she was headed. I flew her there, and we stopped by the orcs for water, under the guise of her being a cultist riding me to the Highlands."

Verthelion paused to consider this. "All right. Simple enough. You'll just use a mortal form, and be the 'cultist'. I'm going to guess they don't get visitors too often, though, so they _might_ be suspicious. We'll improvise in that case."

The thought of Verthelion flying me _anywhere_ was too strange to think about more than a few seconds. I changed the subject desperately. "I'm going to try to use my magic."

"Good luck with _that_. I'm going to go hunt."

"Why? We just ate."

"I know. But it'll keep my mind occupied. Can you, um..."

I smirked. "What's wrong? Open the portal."

"Selriona..."

"What? You and I both know the animals aren't phased in to us, you need to go to the physical realm to hunt."

Verthelion growled. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"Of course."

"I need you to open the portal."

I smirked for a longer time than I should have, using the stubborn magic to give Verthelion passage to the physical world. I stretched out my wings, and set down with my tail in the lake, facing outward.

Right then. I can do this.

I tried to reach inside myself, grasping at my latent stores of energy, like when I opened the portal. It was there, residing deep within my body, but drawing it out felt like I was pulling some viscous slime off a surface; it stretched, but didn't obey. I gritted my teeth and focused my mental power on using it; I hardly got more than enough to create another portal. The energy grew taut, groaned, and snapped back, taking my mind with it. Vivid reds and blues flashed along the rocks, and I let my head sink to the dirt.

* * *

><p>"You absolute idiot." I lifted my head to find the source of the noise. I was in the same place I was before, but it seemed... different somehow. Fuzzy at the edges. "I didn't think you'd actually be so stupid as to try and use your mana stores like that while they were still unusable, but apparently I underestimated you." I moaned, looking to find Nalestrasza standing over me, glaring daggers at me.<p>

"Nice of you to show up."

"Oh shut up. Titans, you idiot, you damn idiot. Do you even _know_ what that did to your body?"

I growled at her. She had this aura of annoyance around her this time. "Enlighten me," I hissed at her.

"I'll try to put in terms you can understand," she said, slowly, as if talking to an invalid. "You overexerted yourself, and _NEARLY INJURED HALF THE ORGANS IN YOUR BODY!"_

"How could I have overexerted myself?" I stood up, returning Nalestrasza's glare. "It was hardly tiring enough to do _that_, and I just drank!"

"It's magic, you idiot! More of its strain appears on your mind, and you didn't think to focus on _that_, did you? No, you just felt the physical exhaustion. _Titans damn it!_" She whacked her tail club on the ground. "_Do not do that again_. Honestly, Selriona! I thought - gah!"

"Well, if you're done, I have something to ask you."

"And what would that be, my twilight self?"

I jumped, pinning Nalestrasza to the stone below us. "WHERE THE HELLS HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST MONTH? Couldn't you have helped when I was ground-sick? When my own _mother_ practically spat on me?"

"She's my mother too. I was getting myself together." With seemingly no effort, she threw me off and stood, causing me to land in the suddenly shallow lake with a splash. "What do you want, Selriona?"

I sputtered, spitting out water. "What do _I_ want? You're the one who decided to show up!"

She gritted her fangs. "What do you want?"

"I _want_ to not die," I snarled at her. Her presence was just boiling my blood.

"Could've fooled me. Why would you have strained your mana so far if you hadn't wanted to die? I mean, portals, yeah, sure, those don't take that much, but what YOU tried to do! Gah!" She cauterized the ground infront of her with a stream of ruby flames.

My eye twitched. "I _thought_, that if I tried to, I'd be able to use it!"

"Well you can't! It's a modification of the aging spell cast on you to become a drake; it opens magic slightly more. You didn't get that, so STOP TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF!" She raised her head. "At any rate, there's something else you need to know."

"Oh, I just _love_ the news you give me."

"Do you want me to tell you it or not?" she snapped at me, the stone around me starting to burst fire through the cracks. Had there been cracks before?

"No, I don't!"

She scoffed. "And here I thought you didn't want to die. Stupid, stupid, stupid." She turned into a cloud of red smoke, and flew away, leaving a faint trial.

Something nudged me in my flank, causing me to jump. "Who was that? Nalestrasza..." It came again, harder this time. The dream's edges started to blur. The lake became part of the ground, the fire mixed with the dirt, creating a large swirled mass of different colors.

* * *

><p>Verthelion nudged me in the side with his head again. "Come on, wake up!" he said desperately. My heart clenched. How long had it been for him? How worried had he been? How could I have <em>done<em> that to him? I groaned, standing up.

"How long have I been out?"

"I don't know! Don't _do _that, Selriona!"

"I'm sorry." I walked up to him, nuzzling the side of his head. "I didn't know I would pass out."

He purred against me. "I forgive you. So, find anything out?"

"Yeah. Turns out, I can't, not beyond portals and illusions. I have to wait to be an adult." I smacked my tail against the ground. "So, time to fly?" I stepped away.

"I agree." He glanced at the magical disk. "That thing worries me. I mean, I know it's a 'capacitor', I trust the mage, but I still can't shake the feeling that it's bad news."

"You're worrying about nothing. As the mortals say, you're making a mountain out of a molehill." I walked over to the lake, dipping a claw in. "Now come on, let's at least reach the Redridge mountains today."

"Right. Let's go." So we did. The lake passed quickly, and soon the portal closed as I moved away from it. I pondered about things on the flight. Mainly about the changes Verthelion pointed out. Were they natural, or was that something done to us by the Old Gods, or their servants? Was it going to get worse, or was it already finished? I didn't know. I had no way of knowing. What about my own changes? Verthelion said that I seemed magically powerful. Maybe that explained why I was so infatuated with the capacitor, or why I could memorize the book on the boat. Even then, I felt a slight itch of curiosity as to the lengths to which I could use my artifact. Hopefully, I'd be able to figure it out. It felt important. Or maybe that was just the change. Either way, it was important to me.

The lake passed below us.

"How did your hunt go?"

"Moderately. The prey here are far less agile than those in the Highlands or even Hyjal."

"They don't have much to watch out for that they can. In the Highlands the food chain is violent, so any animal that survives there has to be stronger."

"I know that! At any rate, I got a few wolves."

"Funny, those are what I ate last time I was here."

"Well, there's not really much _else_ to - " He froze, wings stopping for a moment before resuming their flight pattern.

"Don't tell me," I said.

"Yeah." He let out a fireball, hitting the sterile stone.

"Selriona, you told me that you brought Amanthe to the plaguelands before coming to Hyjal. The Old God says that was because you don't care about me, that you put me on a lower priority."

"Damn it, we have to find a way to get it to leave you _alone!_"

"Tell me about it." He hung his head mid flight. "So?"

"So what?" I asked.

"Is it true? That, I'm on a lower priority?" He looked at me with a terrified expression on his eyes. How much was he being worn down? What agony was Nalestrasza protecting me from?

"No!" I protested. "You're not. But I gave her my word. And she said that there would be a way to Hyjal from the plaguelands. I _promised_ her I'd take her there."

"Okay. Okay, thank you." A mountain loomed below us, devoid of all life. "We should phase back out. We're getting close, I'd bet." He started to descend, me after him. Soon enough, we landed, and I brought us back to the physical realm. Trees sprung up all around me, appearing from nothing. The sun shone brighter without the violet haze to hinder it, and the smells of nature came back to me, not the sterile smell of stone. I took deep breaths to combat my exhaustion. Allright, you've got this. I looked around, taking in the reddish soil of the mountains, signaling where we were. Behind me, Elwynn forest stretched around me like a green sky, white wisps of clouds floating around lazily. They congregated towards a far-off point, climbing over each other to become part of the massive anvil floating over Stormwind. A flash of white lightning appeared below. Where the brightened star had once been, only blue sky remained.

I chuckled. "The look on Samuel's face when he saw me..."

"Hilarious. I almost feel bad for the mortal."

"So do I." I looked at the sun, just starting to commence its descent towards the earth. "So, what now?"

He looked over at me. "We hunt."

My stomach rumbled in agreement. "Odd. I thought magic causes dehydration."

"We _were_ flying pretty fast then." He lowered his head, pointing his crest at me.

"True enough. I'm going to go find something."

"I'll wait for you here." I nodded to him, and took wing, looking for animals to eat. There would be time to mull over the cause of our changes later. For the time being, I settled for replenishing my energy.

* * *

><p>The red soil and stone of the Redridge mountains stretched below me as Verthelion <em>- flew - me - to - the - orcs.<em>

Which was awkward beyond description for both of us.

Neither of us said anything the entire trip. I had come back from hunting, Verthelion said 'let's go', and after that, bam, silence. The lake slowly meandered away below us. Before, I had veiwed the mountains as a scenic place, but now, it was torched, a massive swath of black land cutting through the town of Lakeshire, all the trees within a kilometer of the massive expanse singed, and the ground cracked as water had been flash-boiled beneath it. We both knew what had happened without having to speak; Deathwing. Now that the giant mark was there, the ring of mountains made me feel claustrophobic. Some parts of the stone still simmered, so he had to have been here recently. The lake seemed gloomier, the water churning anxiously as gravity relentlessly hauled it towards the falls. The ruined castle came into view, but it seemed to have far fewer guards than before, which was odd. The stones had a fine layer of soot blanketing them, with several tracks made entirely out of pulverized and superheated wood.

It was on one of these soot-tracks that Verthelion landed, kicking up thick clouds that made me cough. The orcs gathered around us, along with someone decidedly not an orc, but rather very much a blood elf male, wearing the typical robes, with auburn hair, and green eyes. He reminded me eerily of Mariel.

"Oh, hello! I see we have a visitor." It must've been some sort of signal, either that or they knew the elf well, because with that the orcs dissipated.

I swung off Verthelion, shaking off the awkwardness. "Greetings. Exactly what are _you_ doing here?"

"Oh, I was stationed here a few weeks ago. Others were too, but..." His mouth pulled into a mad smile. "Great Deathwing took care of them. I don't mourn them."

I slowly nodded. "Uh _huh_. I suppose I should explain what I'm doing here?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

I looked back at my mate. "Go hunt, or something," I said with forced bitterness. Oh no, no don't do that, the Old Gods will definitely take advantage of that! Verthelion snorted, his eyes showing that he understood, and flew off. I turned back to the elf. "Anyway, where was I?" I thought for a few moments, before extending my hand. "Perhaps introductions are in order. I'm - Selriadamus." Real smooth.

"Hmm, nice. I'm Thural'olan. What are you flying through for?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Water. I'm going north, and I need water to survive the trip through the Steppes and Badlands."

He shrugged. "Seems reasonable enough. Follow me." He turned around and started headed to the dilapidated castle guarded by only two orcs leaning against crumbling pedastles, me following behind him. "So, you're going north, huh?" We turned into a castle, walking down a corridor filled with crumbling stones and partially imploded walls.

"I am." Thural'olan stopped at the end. "There's no water here."

He continued as if he hadn't heard me. "Heard about those traitor twilight dragons?" I stiffened. No way. "Yes, I know." No, no way. He held up a palm, fire condensing from the air and swirling into an orb, before launching it at the space I had been a moment before. Of course, of course the Old God wouldn't just rely on driving Verthelion insane. It would tell others. They'd be pitted against us. Even if the cultist hadn't known about me before, how easy would it be for the Old God to tell it the moment I arrived? Very.

I formed a ball of twilight flame and threw it back around the corner I had just turned, the 'Ah!' telling me that it had hit its mark. Sadly, the footsteps continued, and I ran. I ducked, a concussive explosion of fire erupting from the stone next to me, causing dust to spray over my hair and coat my skin as I bolted out of the ruins, releasing my true form and taking wing, but not before the cultist burst out and yelled 'Stop it!'. The orcs threw first and asked questions later, nets tangling my wings and forcing me to the ground. I burned through the nets quickly, but not before they were on me.

And I ran. Clearly, flying wasn't going to work. I briefly considered stopping to fight them, but how much attention would that attract? How many more guards would come? There didn't appear to be that many, but I couldn't smell much over the scent of decaying mortar. I dodged, tangling up in nets that I kept burning, guards from ruined towers aiming arrows at me and scoring a few hits in my flank.

I jumped to the side to avoid an enormous blast of fire. The castle fell behind me, leaving the hill. I could vaguely smell Verthelion down there. I took a risk, jumped, and took wing.

Big mistake.

A barrage of weighted nets and arrows, along with a fireball I barely managed to swivel away from, came crashing down on me. Looking back as I tumbled through the sky, there were around fifty guards, far more than I had seen. The ground came up and slammed into me, breaking off some of the arrows and shoving their tips deeper into me, causing me to roar in pain. I rolled some more, tangling myself hopelessly in the nets.

"Verthelion!" A small crashing of brush behind me told me he was on his way, but the orcs were lining up to fire again. I took a deep breath, and launched a fireball, exhaling while it was still in my mouth. One of the screamed for them to take cover, and they did, hiding as the wide river of fire overtook them. The cultist mage just stood his ground, a sphere of blue energy deflecting my flames around him as more fire coalesced in his hands. I spat more fireballs at him, watching in horror as they simply deflected off the shield, and the fireball he channeled grew to be the size of his head, with no signs of stopping. Samuel had told me about this spell, the one that all hated to be on the recieving end of, and all fireballs wished to grow up to be. Pyroblast. I stopped struggling, watching in horror as it grew to critical mass.

Another twilight blast hit him, but not from me, causing the shield to implode. Verthelion crashed into me, shoving me out of the way of the Pyroblast, which released a deafening explosion, punching a meter deep crater where I had just been.

"Titans," he began in Draconic. "You attract danger." He launched another fireball, but it rippled along a new shield. The orcs came out of hiding, surrounding us. "Now what?"

"Um, um..." They took arrows out of their quivers, and the elf started up another Pyroblast. Wait. What had Samuel said? _To release it you just need to feed a spell into the magic. The energy contained will copy the spell as best it can._ I couldn't do much magic at all, and a straight up release wouldn't help us. An idea hit me. I started drawing up my stubborn magic into an orb, feeding it into the disk as I flew through the shadow runes. The artifact shuddered as it tried to replicate it. The orcs had placed the arrows into their bows and drew back.

A stream of arcane magic flew out of the capacitor, coalescing into a portal just large enough for the two of us. But something went wrong. Its core was pure black, not showing anything beyond. The portal sucked both of us in, and the world went black. Verthelion was across from me, mouth agape but no noise coming from him. The portal stole the breath from my lungs, beat me with it, then put the breath back in my lungs to repeat the process. Flashes of purple/silver lightning echoed across the world, showing stars hidden by a thick wall of black clouds. A force pummeled into my chest, forcing me to curl up, stretching the nets tighter. Another one to my back undid the strain. I couldn't call to Verthelion. What had I done?

There was a terrible ghastly silence. Verthelion flew farther away from me, and I farther from him, gusts of gale-force winds ripping us away.

There was a terrible ghastly noise. Lightning ripped through my vision, all alone. Was I moving at all? It felt like I was, but my vision didn't agree.

Finally, there was a crash, like a boulder was dropped on me. I fell, stretching the tendrils of arcane energy wrapped around me in addition to the net, before they snapped. The world came back. Where was I? With the nets still tangled around me, I craned my neck to see what the environment was like.

Green grass crumbled beneath my body. Looking around, I noticed I was high up in mountains, looking down at a vast span of green fields stretching almost as far as I could see. I picked up Verthelion's scent far to my right, but I continued looking. A large hole in the ground situated itself to my right, with a large floating crystal twenty meters tall floating in the middle, a rough octahedron of dull oranges and browns, reflecting the light even from a kilometer away, with small white pebbles scattered around it in circles. Far in front of me was a shrine made of white stones, two pillars reaching up with another on top. I could see clouds of vapor floating between the stones. Far to the left a fort erected itself, sharpened walls preventing anything from getting in, with red banners with some design I couldn't make out on them.

Titans, what had I _done_?

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. Thumbs up to those who catch the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy (property of Douglas Adams) reference in here.<br>**


	32. Chapter 32:Home

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>I moaned, wincing as the arrowheads made their presence known. "Verthelion..."<p>

"I'm here." I heard him walking over to me. "Here, let me get those nets off. Don't go into a mortal form. Those arrowhead wounds look nasty, and let's not risk your flesh shrinking around solid rock."

I shuddered. "Good idea." He shifted to his mortal form in a moment. He was getting better at it. His fingers pinched and grabbed at the nets, pulling them around my wings and claws, until I could untangle myself and stand.

"Hold on, we need to get those arrowheads out, and then clean the wounds. Hold still."

"Infection would be bad." I did as he said. His fingers dug into the wounds, bringing a hiss from me as he pulled out the half-dozen rocks from my flesh. Soon enough, he did.

"Okay, hold still. I still need to sterilize the injury."

"You're not going to - " A stream of burning hot fire answered my question. I gritted my fangs and bore it, until he relented.

"Alright, that's better." A brief glare of violet light signaled his transformation. "How're you feeling?"

"Burned and stabbed." I furled and unfurled my wings, glaring at Verthelion. "What did I do?"

"Something with a portal. That's all I know, I was hoping you knew what you did, considering that, you know, you're the one who _did it_."

"I don't know. I fed a twilight portal into the artifact, and it tried to replicate it with arcane magic. I thought that would just make a regular portal, but something must've gone wrong."

"Did the portal have any place to go?" I stayed silent. "Well, that explains it. It's a miracle we're even on Azero - where in the name of the Titans are we?"

I gulped. He had a point. If I hadn't set the portal to a specific location, then who knows where it could've brought us? It was a miracle we weren't floating in the Great Dark Beyond. That we would also be on Azeroth was too good to be true. "I have no idea. I mean, Titans, we're lucky enough to be on solid ground."

"Yes, that's probably true. But look at those buildings. We'll get close, see if the patterns on those red banners make any sense to us, and we'll know if we're on Azeroth at all."

"Right. Sounds good." I extended forelegs, wincing as the cauterized wounds stretched. "So we just get a _little_ bit closer, see if we recognize anything, then get away if, whoever they are, they might be hostile?"

"That's the idea." He motioned with his head towards the buildings. "Come on, let's go." He took off, me right behind him, wincing slightly as the arrow wounds stretched. Heavy fog drifted around the stone shrine, rapidly falling behind me as the structure increased in size. Soon enough, I could make out the detail on the banners. A black, upside down tear-drop shape was cut off at the tail, with a diamond inside and vaguely blade-shaped designs attached to its outside.

The symbol of the Horde.

"What?" Verthelion hissed, turning around so as not to draw the attention of the guards. "That's, that's impossible! No way we could've ended up on Azeroth as well!"

"Well, we clearly did! I'm not going to question a miracle."

"It can't be a miracle! Something had to have interfered. There is no way that we simply lucked out like this."

"But then what? I didn't think that the twilight portal doesn't have any place set for it to arrive, so when it becomes a regular portal..."

"It pulls us to a random place. But something must've changed."

"We were in the Great Dark Beyond for a while, I think. I saw that much."

Verthelion shuddered. "That was terrible. But then, we aren't there anymore. What changed?"

I wanted to shrug, but that's not quite possible mid-air. "I don't know. Something must've pulled us back to Azeroth. I don't know too much about regular portals beyond that they let you go places fast."

He chuckled. "Sums up my knowledge of them pretty well." The air's humidity started to elevate as we neared the stone shrine. Fog hung around it like salamanders on a log. "Where are we?"

"It's on the tip of my tongue. I've been here before. I know that we're north, and close to our cave." It clicked. "Ah, yes. The Arathi Highlands."

He shook his head. "It just seems too convenient to me that the random-location portal brought us to a planet, Azeroth at that, on the surface, and actually brought us _closer_ to our objective. There has to be something else involved."

I rolled my eyes. "We've established that. Samuel said that the capacitor would try to replicate the spell placed into it. Maybe it wasn't as random as we think."

"Maybe. But for now, let's just get to our home." That sent a shiver down my spine. _Home_. We were so close. The place I'd lived most of my life. The steady _drip drip_ of water from the stalactites, the smooth dome that was the portion I slept in, matted with twigs and branches. The memories I had there, finding it within 2 days of becoming a drake with Verthelion, who, even though not my destined mate at the time, was still my friend. The long process of butchering trees to get the requirements for the 'matting' to replicate the small cave I slept in as a whelp, the sharp smell of mineral-rich water, the view of the sunset from the mouth, with the snake-like 'fangs' of rock framing the marvelous display of color.

Titans, I wanted to go back. Even if it was for just a short time, just until it was time for me to become an adult, I wanted it so _desperately_. Stormwind had been tolerable, though the mortal bedding was nowhere near as comfortable, though Amanthe couldn't bear to sleep on what I did when I had her try, so it must've been a mortal thing. _Home_. Where the heart is. A memory came up. I shivered, unwilling to go into the past. I didn't know what would happen to my real body, if it would pass out, and how Verthelion would react.

I murmured, "Flashback." and the world fled from me.

* * *

><p>I twisted through the air, laughing all the while, zipping in between thermals and downdrafts, dodging small gusts of wind. I had not been on the ground longer than ten minutes while awake for the past two days, not since I had become a drake. "Come on, Verthelion! What's the matter, can't keep up?"<p>

Said drake snarled at me. "You've barely stayed on the ground since Valiona transformed us!"

"How could I? This is _amazing_!" Just to prove my point, I did a loop around Verthelion, before jumping on his back and launching off.

"Oh, that's it!" He spat a fireball at me, which I danced out of the way of, before performing a flying tackle at me, which I easily fell below, spitting a blast up at his exposed stomach. He gasped in pain and tried to land on me, but moving out of the way was whelp's play. I smiled, remembering that two days ago I had been one. I flew up to a tree hanging on the mountain, looking at him as he surged forward at me, secretly bringing flames into my crop and air into my lungs. Just as he was about to crash into me, I exhaled, spraying him with -

Quick as a viper, he brought his tail-club forward underneath his legs, knocking the air and fire out of me as it crashed into my stomach. The tail-club. I had forgotten about that. I tumbled out of the tree, hitting myself repeatedly on branches until I came to a stop underneath his claws, digging into my soft, exposed stomach. "Give up?" He tightened his grip.

I growled at him. It would do no good to resist. As much as I hated to admit it... "Yes," I hissed. He got off, leaving marks on my chest trickling violet blood, but already they started to clot. To my right a red drake with a faint white scar on their back looked on, but I didn't notice, and they didn't move.

"So, we still need to find a home. I'm thinking we keep going this way another ten minutes, we should find it." He motioned towards the direction with his horns, and I gave him a look that said 'You fail'.

"That's the way we just came. You idiot. Let's keep going this way." I stepped over a stone, and jumped past a broken sword, coated in the first flecks of rust. I grimaced. Rust would be very bad to enter my blood stream. While, according to Valiona, not poisonous to mortals, it would be deadly to us. A toxin only powerful nature magic could cure. The rust would attach itself to our blood if it was beyond a certain quanti, replicating slowly, making it harder and harder to breathe. I'd seen victims of rust poisoning before; they'd have a harder and harder time breathing until they couldn't attack or even defend themselves, and if combat didn't finish them off, soon they didn't have the breath to stand, to eat, and eventually, died of suffocation. It wasn't pretty.

"Sure, sure. This way. Onward," he drawled. I shook my head. He could be so irritating. We both took to the skies, me leaving him in the dust, forced to circle back repeatedly not toavoid passing him by entirely. As the sun set, we (I) noticed a little hole in the mountainside, like a snake opening its gaping maw to devour unsuspecting prey. _That's it, come closer, no, I won't bite. _

"Hmm, this seems like a good shelter." I landed on my hind legs, flapping my wings even as I set down my forelegs.

Verthelion flew next to me, repeating my motions. "We still need to look inside to know. Follow me." He walked inside, me next to him. Stalactites and stalagmites dripped and reflected the noon sky, lighting up the interior. I suspected that, at night, it would be pitch black. Yeah, no shit, Aspect of the Obvious. Soon enough the tunnel diverged to the left and to the right.

We took the left. The tunnel smoothed out, the stony spears retreating from us as we ventured farther in, and after a turn to the left, all light vanished. Someone stepped on my left claw.

"Watch it," I hissed.

"And tell me, how would I do that?" I growled in response to that, and spat a small fireball down the corridor, briefly highlighting it. The room right in front of Verthelion opened up into a cave the shape of a cloud, like someone boiled the stone like water, froze one of the bubbles, and created the cave around it, before attaching stalactites. Oddly enough, stalagmites were missing. "Hmm, nice. This looks pretty good. What do you think?"

"I say we check the other end first." I was already turned around when I heard his shuffle.

"But so far, this looks like it could house me."

"Provided there's another chamber, I'll be here, just to annoy you every morning."

Verthelion growled. "You would."

I turned to my left, heading down the right length. Here, the light continued to bounce around, maintaining a level of lighting. At the end of the tunnel the cave opened up into a large hemisphere, like the top half of my egg. The ground dropped slightly, but was otherwise smooth. In the night, it would be almost like my shell.

"I'll take this one."

"Good, you can _have_ it. Just stay away from mine."

"Oh, I will." It wasn't good to be a guest in another twilight dragon's home, even if it was connected to your own. I looked back at my portion. Some tree portions here, yes, I liked that idea. It would be a wonderful home for the years to come.

* * *

><p>I pulled myself back to the present. How long had I been lost in memory? More importantly, what had my body been doing? I looked around, comforted to find I was still in mid-air, flying in what my internal compass said was the same direction. "How long was I out?"<p>

Verthelion looked over at me inquisitively. "Out? What do you mean out? You just said 'Flashback', then kept flying like nothing changed."

"How long ago?"

"About an hour, why?"

"It didn't feel like that long. Wow."

"You had a flashback. What about?"

"When we first found our cave."

He laughed. "Yes, that was interesting. You seemed to be allergic to the ground."

I rolled my eyes. "I remember. How close are we?"

"Well, we're still in the Arathi Highlands. We're closing in on some ditch, though. I can smell some mortals down there." I looked ahead. Sure enough, there, like someone had clawed the land, was a canyon, with the scent of mortals filling it. We'd be arriving over it in three minutes at our rate.

"Probably an outpost. Just fly above it, and all will be well."

"What do you think I was _going _to do?" We lapsed into a brief silence, passing over the mortal outpost. Within ten minutes, we had left it behind. "So, we should probably hunt now. Hydrate ourselves too."

"Good idea. I think I see something down there..." As soon as I said that, we both dove towards a raptor, mottled green and orange with bright yellow stripes, claws extended and wind screaming past our wings. The raptor looked up, let out a fang-gritting screech, and tried to run. We both flew into it, ripping it half before it could so much as take a second step. We ate it as we flew, one half in each of our mouths, its body fluid hydrating us so we could keep going. "We're close. So close..."

"I know, Selriona. We're almost there. But we need a plan as to what we do after."

"The cult will hound us. That's why we were attacked; the Old God told the cultist there about us. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire cult knew of our 'betrayal' by now."

"That's not good. Couldn't the Old God tell the rest of our flight, too? Then how will we be adults?"

That made my blood freeze. "I don't know. I didn't think of that. But you're right. How? If none of them trust us, if they all think we're traitors - "

"We technically are. There's a chance we can persuade them. We have to try. But what about after? Where will we go? What will we do?"

I lowered my head, my crest taking the wind. "I don't know. I don't know." I looked at him hopefully. "Any ideas?"

Verthelion shook his head. "Fresh out, I'm afraid. We can try to persuade them when we get there. Sure as hells can't do it any other time."

"Convince? How are we going to do that? It was so hard with you, why would someone else listen to us?"

Verthelion considered this for a few moments. "Alright. We'll go to them, and on the off chance they haven't been convinced, become adults. We'll be two to one, and convince them. Otherwise... we convince them while dodging their attacks."

"That plan sucks," I said with a nervous laugh.

"Yeah, yeah it does. But we don't have many options. At any rate, we're closing in. What about our home itself? The cult would have no problem coming to attack us while we slept. I just don't think we can risk to stay in one place, ever." No, he wasn't saying this. Not once we'd come so close!

"But then, what can we do? Just keep flying around in circles until we can become adults? Is that all we'll _ever_ do?" My heart clenched. Was this to be my life? Just, running from the cult forever? From the Reds, the Old Gods, everything? Never being given a moment's quarter, an instant's respite. Was that my fate?

"I hope not. When we're adults, we can easily defend ourselves from the cult. But right now..."

"I see what you mean." I sighed. "This is horrible. When did things go so _wrong?_"

"I don't know. But we have to deal with it. We have to, there's no other choice."

"We _could_ go to the Red flight and ask for help." The moment the words left my mouth, I knew it was a stupid idea. We'd be killed long before we'd be able to say a word.

"Are you crazy? What makes you think they'll believe us? We have no proof, and they have no reason to believe us. Even if they did, their patrols will blast us out of the sky before we could explain ourselves. No, we have to keep moving. Even if we can use our home's natural choke point to keep us safe, they can easily trap us in and starve us out."

I shuddered, remembering how I had almost starved once before. "So, we keep flying."

"I'm afraid it looks like it."

"Then... why are we going to our cave in the first place?"

"Well, it would be nice to sleep there again. Even if for just a while."

I nodded in agreement. "And maybe we can go back there now and again."

He shook his head. "No, that won't work. The cult might station rogues there."

"_Damn it!_" I fired a blast at the ground far below, causing the magical disk on my neck to rattle from the momentum, and I watched as the blue fireball lightly exploded on contact with the ground, sterilizing it. Was the world determined to take away everything good in my life? "There has to be some place where we'll be safe. Somewhere, anywhere! The cult can't follow us _everywhere_, can they?"

"I don't know." His voice drooped. "I don't know. But we have to try. We've got to try."

I looked down below at the green plains of the Arathi Highlands, streaming away past me. "They'll catch us eventually. They'll collapse around us like a ring, and then we'll be done for."

"Not certainly. We don't know how much priority the Old God places on us. I find it unlikely that the entirety of the Twilight's Hammer will be devoted to killing just us."

"Finally, some good news," I said bitterly. "I just wish there was something we could do. Wait, there is. We can hide out in the twilight realm, live in our cave that way!"

"Good idea. We can live there that way." He smiled. "That's one problem solved. Things are looking up already," he said with an air of confidence. Whether or not it was fake, I couldn't tell. Another stone shrine moved past far to my right, but instead of mist and fog, it was devoid of grass. Solid earth and stone surrounded it, churning. It radiated the smell of something primal, something untamed. In front of us a road wound through a colossal bridge only barely visible from where I was. Chunks of it had broken off, no doubt due to the Cataclysm, and all in all did not look safe in the least to tread on, like at the slightest touch the entire thing would just implode, one giant metal block following the other into the ocean below. Luckily, we wouldn't have to. Beyond that would be the murky bog of the Wetlands, where I had almost died the agonizingly slow death of starvation.

Ah, memories.

The trip across the span went without event, and we soon entered the Wetlands. The humidity sky-rocketed, and clouds of vapor dominated my lungs. The winds also picked up, tossing Verthelion and I around like leaves, only barely able to stay on course. After an hour of fighting the violent winds which strained the trees below us so far they almost snapped under the pressure, Verthelion screeched, "Reds!" A gust of wind threw me forward, and I sensed them too. Three wyrms, twelve drakes, and eight dragonspawn. We both dove down as best we could with the winds half-levitating us to the ground, and shifted to mortal forms to conceal the scent of our energies.

"Whoa whoa wait," I began. "Shouldn't we be going around them?"

"Yes, but think of it this way. They might tell us something important, and if they find us out, we can try our hand at explaining things. We'll need to do so sooner or later, why not now?"

"For one thing we're still adolescents!" I hissed at him.

"Yes, I know that, but what differences does it make in persuasion? Come on." Reluctantly, I agreed, though secretly I was still a little worried about meeting the Red flight because of my brood-mother.

From what I could sense, the Reds moved slowly in a strafing pattern, east to west, west to east, slowly moving south, but very slowly, so even in our mortal forms and buffeted with hurricane-force winds, we soon caught up, and the moment the first ruby dragonspawn came into view Verthelion decided he was a snake by the way his hand suddenly found mine and started squeezing the life out of it.

"Hand... let go."

He did. "Sorry." We both stepped out, and the dragonspawn, a male with ruby and emerald styled armor, turned to us, flaming axe raised.

"You, mortals. What are you doing here?"

My throat clenched. Cover story, think of a cover -

Verthelion bowed. "Oh thank the Light. I thought you were - what's going on here?" Other dragonspawn with various weapons and staves patrolled the borders of a massive stretch of scarred earth, soot replacing dirt and ash replacing trees for miles ahead. The winds must've distracted me from noticing the mark; it was enormous, and the red dragons and drakes flew their strafing runs with flame exploding out of their maws, and where it touched the ground some small amount of brown returned to it, and eventually some shoots started to appear. Closer and closer to us, the plants grew until they melded with the Wetlands.

"We are curing the earth left in the Destroyer's wa - " He stopped, eyed us, and turned away, probably remembering he wasn't to engage in idle conversation with mortals. The dragonspawn ran to a male wyrm resting, out of flames, with the tip of his left horn missing. He spoke in Draconic, thinking we couldn't understand him. "Eralstrasz, two mortals have just entered the perimeter. What should I do with them?"

'Eralstrasz' looked to us, and continued to speak in our native language. "Continue your patrol. I will handle them." With that, the dragonspawn hurried back to his perimeter and began pacing, while Eralstrasz took several earth-shaking, ground-clearing steps toward us.

Verthelion's anaconda grip returned as Eralstrasz got closer, and I quickly made my mortal scent even stronger to cover up any twilight energy left. Not a moment too soon, as the wyrm inhaled deeply through his nostrils. "Mortals. What are you doing here?"

Verthelion stuttered out, "L - L - L - L - Lost. Where, I mean, what's going on here?" He craned his neck up, then suddenly took an interest in the ground beneath him. Whether or not that was part of the act or his residual fear of the 'corrupt' Red flight, I don't know.

"We are trying to contain the damage done by the Destroyer. Ahead of us, the Green flight purges the corruption from the earth, then we regrow the life destroyed. At first we kept up with Deathwing well, but we've been tiring, and he's getting faster. Stronger." He cocked his head to the side. "You say you are lost. Where are you _supposed_ to be?"

"N-Not here. Sorry for bothering you." Verthelion started to turn around, but Eralstrasz let out a low, menacing growl that made him freeze up, me unable to tell how much of his fear was faked.

"Hold on." He stepped closer to Verthelion, pushing me lightly out of the way, and took in another deep breath through his nostrils that caused Verthelion to freeze like a statue. Instantly, I saw his eyes slit.

I knew what had just happened. "Now, hold on, I can explain - " Eralstrasz swung his head towards me, and took in a deep breath. I waited for the gurgling noise to appear, for the crimson flames to wash over me. But they didn't, and he seemed shocked by this too. He was also shocked by the fact that Verthelion practically pulled my arm out of its socket yanking me out of harm's way. He held up a hand with a crackling twilight fireball, then let go of me and used his second hand to increase its size. Eralstrasz hesitated at the sight, and I quickly released my own flames into a single large fireball. The other reds turned to us, but didn't move to attack us.

Did... did we just take a Wyrm hostage?

He growled. "You think you can cause your flames to attach to my scales? We can remove it from us."

Verthelion seemed to decide to act a lot braver than he felt, which was fairly obvious to me through the fear radiating off him. "And risk falling farther behind Deathwing?" He took a step back into the brush, and I followed his example. At this sentence, the Reds all exchanged looks, except for Eralstrasz, who continued to stare us down. "You're already far enough behind as it is. He razed the Redridge mountains about one day ago. You can't afford to waste time with _us_." We took another step back. Why wasn't he trying to persuade them?

Eralstrasz growled, but I could see in his eyes Verthelion had struck an important subject. I saw one of the dragonspawn females gathering flames into an orb.

"Get down!" I hurled my fireball at the dragonspawn's feet, forcing her to back up and interrupt her spell. I knocked Verthelion over, releasing my illusion, and forced myself to enter the twilight realm. Shadow runes flew over my closed eyelids as I heard Eralstrasz rear up, and then...

Nothing. The world engulfed itself with darkness yet again, the wind fading.

I opened my eyes, seeing that the trees were gone, replaced with indigo haze and thick water-like currents of shadow. I took my weight off the still-human Verthelion. "Are you alright? Any bones cracked, anything like that?"

He stood, legs shaking a little. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine. That... could've gone better."

"Yeah, it could've. What happened to persuading them?"

"I was... I was scared, all right? Not as scared as I pretended to be, but still, I lost my nerve, happy?" He released his illusion, the colors of the twilight realm temporarily camouflaging him before revealing the transformation. "Come on, let's go. We're almost back."

"You still see them as corrupt, don't you?" I asked, eying him with a look that screamed 'I know the answer but I'm going to make you say it if it's the last thing I do'.

He sighed even as he raised his weight on his hind legs, flapping to momentarily remain on two feet, before pulling his claws out of the earth and assuming flight. I followed after him, both of us hovering. "Yeah, I do. It's just, you figured it out yourself. You persuaded me. And I've been believing it longer than you, so it's going to be harder for me. But it'll get done." We started flying back home. So close. _So close_, it was tormenting me. "So, we go back to our cave, sleep in it through the twilight realm, and when we need to hunt, we'll just leave the cave and then the twilight realm. Should keep us safe."

I nodded. "But... what about the Old God? Has it left you alone?"

Verthelion twitched violently. "I - It - You." He let out a defeated moan. "It hasn't. But it told me, while you were with that blood elf in Redridge... it let loose on me. Even now, it's screaming at how I'm not supposed to tell you about it's continued attempts. It told me... it told me that you couldn't help me. That telling you was futile, and it told me so many times, over and over, so loudly, I believed it in moments. I'm... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have listened, but it's just so horrible. You don't know how lucky you are."

"I won't let you go mad. We'll find a way."

"What if there _isn't_ a way? No, no there has to. There has to."

"The Old Gods can only communicate to those above their bodies. But we've been all around Azeroth, so something must be extending its range on us. Something has to be letting it talk to us no matter where we are."

"But what? Some device? Magic on us? Something in our bodies? It could be _anything!_"

"I don't know. Neither of us can investigate it thoroughly right now. But even if we can't, I'll _always_ help you. After all." I smiled warmly at him. "I didn't come across the world to save you only to let you go mad shortly after."

"I didn't think so. Now come on, let's go home."

He sped away, and I was right behind him, gaining rapidly.

* * *

><p>I dug in my claws into the soft dirt, looking down at the run-down remains. Not long ago I had been here, and the regeneration of the land had proceeded quickly. The violet ground had been retreating and fading when I passed through with Amanthe, but now I could only see the oddness of the soil through contrasting with the land outside, otherwise it resembled regular earth. How did it heal so fast? Last time only a few blades of grass had peeked through the soil, and now there were a few yellow cardinals, Arthas's tears, peacebloom, cinderbloom, earthroot, and several other plants, some hardy, some not, that I didn't recognize. Verthelion shuffled on his haunches next to me.<p>

"It's gone..."

"Yes, it is," I answered him.

"What happened? How could they have destroyed it like that? I know how strong they are, but there's no way that it should have been possible."

"The whole need not be equal to the sum of the parts." I clenched my claws around a small rock, and tossed it down, watching as it tumbled down the mountainside. "At any rate, they did. No doubt, they'll defeat Deathwing. Not without help, but they're too strong. He wouldn't be the first Aspect."

He nodded. "Malygos. They defeated him in his own realm, yes? But they needed the aid of the Red flight."

"He also had empowered himself with Azeroth's magic." I peeked the fork of my tongue through some of the holes between my fangs where I hadn't pressed my jaws together. "So I don't know."

"But didn't you hear what the red wyrm said? Deathwing's getting stronger. Who knows how powerful he is now."

"I don't know. I don't know. But, we've got other things to do right now." I spread my wings to their full length, whacking Verthelion along the snout. I snickered, jumping down from my perch. He followed suit. I'll slow down, stay with him. The course we took would normally have caused us to slam right into the Bastion's spire, but there was nothing left of it, any metal likely taken by either scavengers or armies for the war effort. We had dallied coming here, and I knew it, and I suspect he did too. Taking longer to hunt outside the twilight realm, not going anywhere near as fast as we usually did. I admit, I was somewhat nervous going back. It had been nearly a year. How much had it changed since then?

The opening came into view, the familiar spires exactly as I had last seen them. We both walked into, in the same form when we first came across it. But this was different. Every single centimeter of it just felt foreign, and I knew why; our scent had left it. It smelled exactly like when we first came to it, but more importantly, it didn't smell like _home_. Verthelion sighed. "Let's check your chamber first." We did. I stepped over the stalagmite I had blasted to smithereens months ago, the same day Lirastrasza had assaulted me. I stepped in front of him, and looked at where my chamber was.

Was.

A pile of rubble concealed it. Maybe I could've moved it with time, but likely, there's nothing behind it. No, how could it have happened? My, my home...

I bent my head down and pressed into Verthelion's neck wordlessly. He wrapped a wing around me, and for a few moments we froze like that, his head on top of mine, me curled into him. Finally, I whispered, "Let's see your chamber." We pulled out and walked over to his chamber, which was as I remembered it, with slightly more scraps of metal that Verthelion must've found interesting and collected over the years, before being transferred to Hyjal.

"It's still intact," he breathed. He glanced at me, and closed his eyes. A stream of dark blue mist came out of each of his scales, and sluggishly moved into an orb in front of him, contracting, writhing, expanding, and contracting again, for a minute before opening into a twilight portal, causing him to sag from the effort. "After you," he whispered. I just nodded, and stepped through. My home, destroyed. Gone, buried, collapsed. He followed close after me, and after a few moment's concentration, shut the portal off. "So, now we wait."

I nodded. "A few more months, and then it's time. It's so far off, and I'm nervous already."

"So am I. Come on, let's sleep. We're safe, we're home."

_He_ was home, I wasn't. I was a guest. My home had been buried under tons of stone. Gone forever. Regardless of my thoughts, we both laid down in the bottom of the cavern, and Verthelion draped a wing over me again, combining his body heat with mine. I nudged against him, and sighed. "Thank you. We'll find a way."

"A way to what? There's only so much we can do, and there's so many things that need _doing_."

"The mortals have a saying. 'Where there's a will, there's a way.' I think that applies fairly well to us."

He nodded. "I guess it does." He closed his eyes, and I let my own eyelids fall down. "Selriona?"

"Yes?" I asked without opening my eyes.

"Thanks for helping, with the Old God. I'm really grateful."

"What are mates for?"

He chuckled, his flank expanding and contracting more notably along mine as he did. "True. Good night."

"Is it even night?" I could _hear_ the 'Oh' expression on his face when he answered.

"I don't know, but I'm sleeping." He fell silent after that.

"Good idea." I let myself fall into unconsciousness. Darkness temporarily cocooned me, before flashes of light echoed along the inside of my eyelids. Reds, greens, blues, purples. A brief period of blackness, followed by flickering dark blue. The dark blue became solid, with only flashes of flesh-color and red streaking through it like lightning bolts, then a giant orb of red and orange in the middle. The scene played by my closed eyes became pitch black again, before erupting into green with the faintest tinges of a golden color. Then it became pale gray, almost white, with a peachy color in the bottom left. The scene turned red, then blue, but the shifting blob of peach human-skin color remained, slowly growing larger. Then, a flash of dark gray streaked with white which threatened to destroy the enlarging blob and a smaller blob in the bottom right. Gold replaced the gray, before becoming blue again. It turned yellow, and the larger of the blobs grew to dominate my eyesight, the smaller one vanishing. The scene rapidly flashed shapes of tree-green, red, black, orange, moss-green, indigo, and miasmic brown. The human-skin colored blob vanished as silver and blue engulfed my vision before turning green, with flecks of violet splattered along it like my blood. The flecks vanished, and the green began to peel like burning paper, dark blue emerging behind it and then -

The green snapped back, hiding the blue, and started to glow more intensely, before vanishing. A flash of gold, swirling of green, black, red and human-skin color tinged with blue. The green returned and started peeling once again, but this time succeeded, and the dark blue filled my vision. Various shapes of indigo-violet appeared in sharp contrast to the black background, and then I fell into deep sleep, but not before the absolute darkness began to brighten slightly.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Holy.**

**Shit.**

**200k words. Never, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this story hitting _200 thousand words_. Maybe 90k tops. Thank you all so, so SO much for sticking with me this far. Thanks to those who read, favorited, alerted, and extra big thanks to those who reviewed; **Ori Whitedeer, Septoth, IXthy, KennHyrulian, wanda von dunayev, DarkVynAngel, 11SnowLeopard11, nightdragon0, Belladelias, Tich, Keelosprower15, xXMadCatXx, Diloph, Apocalypse Survivor, lisethshade14, Shinkicker, Mirae-no-sekai, the anonymous reviewers Loki, Lovmp, Umbraz/mrumbraz, Coren, KyreanNightblood, and Dude.****

**Special thanks to Mlaia3 for continuously reviewing, and to Dusty the Umbravita for both reviewing and beta'ing this.**

**I can see the finish line from here, Jesus. It's kinda far, but I can see it.  
><strong>


	33. Chapter 33:Dragon

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing this.**

* * *

><p>I shivered, waking up from my dream about Nalestrasza. It had been a downright <em>creepy<em> dream. Nothing could possibly compare with the inexplicable event that occurred in my mind. What happened, you may ask? Did she slowly rip a dream-mortal apart ligament by ligament? Nowhere near disturbing enough. Did she reveal herself to actually be the Old God's influence and proceed to shower me with all sorts of nightmares and hallucinations? Oh no, what actually happened was far, far worse.

Nalestrasza had been _happy_.

She had been in her mortal form; a cheery, perpetually smiling high elf with sunken cheeks, red hair and hazel eyes, with our shared scar running down her left hand, and dressed in elegant, flowing ruby robes of silk so soft they could only be, well, dreamt of. She dragged me into a room similar to Amanthe's, but with no door and instead of the usual decorations, a table with two chairs and a cake, half red, half violet, in the middle. Red and indigo paper hung from the ceiling, and periodically she snapped her fingers and caused small eruptions of similarly colored confetti out of nowhere. Furthermore, the grin she had on her face could have very easily split her head in two.

I shuddered against Verthelion's still sleeping body. The horror... she said it was a celebration for the 'occasion', how it was such a big deal we were finally going to become adults, be able to protect lives better if we chose to and all that stuff. The cake had been all well and good, though. The normally arrogant, semi-omniscient and perpetually sardonic red drake had been the cheeriest thing I had _ever_ seen. The, the _horror_!

I stood, letting the wing I had draped over Verthelion come up, sending ripples through the twilight realm, and walked out to the mouth of our cave. I'd lost track of how many months it'd been, how much time had elapsed, but I did know, more so than anything else, that enough had passed. The sun slowly rose from the horizon, sending shivering rays of red and orange through the sky, pushing back Azeroth's shadow, the cave's 'fangs' framing the colorful scene. For a while I just sat there, watching the sun rise with almost imperceptible slowness until it grew too bright to look at even through the haze of the twilight realm, and then I looked at the place where the Bastion had been.

I heard Verthelion before I smelled him, and soon enough his footsteps came to a slow as he sat next to me, looking at the healing lands of the Twilight Highlands, if they could even still be called that with the practically non-existent presence of the cult. "It's time," I said once he finished moving.

"It is. Are you nervous?"

"Yeah, a little." Though it couldn't _compare_ to Nalestrasza's party. "We should get going. It's a long flight from here to the Hinterlands."

"Not terribly long," he pointed out.

"But enough to warrant moving right away."

"True. Besides, we shouldn't dally on this." He spread his wings and dove, and I followed suit. The area that had once housed the Bastion of Twilight was entirely cured, no corruption remaining. Soon enough, we were on our way to the Hinterlands, where the Naaru had said that a dragon would be waiting to turn us into adults. I had to believe they would be there, that it hadn't deceived me. The past few months had been, well, great. Nobody attacked us, since we used the twilight realm. But that didn't mean there wasn't the feeling of doom, of hopelessness weighing down on my back like elementium, like we were hopeless, that no matter what we did there would be no solution, no end, nothing permanent, and over all everything just felt melancholy.

But I had to try.

Soon enough, the Twilight Highlands gave way to the Wetlands, and the Wetlands to the Arathi Highlands.

"Selriona, let's go hunt."

I nodded. "Good idea." My stomach growled its approval. "We're almost there. Titans, I'm _nervous_."

We dove toward a helpless raptor. Poor thing. Verthelion chuckled as we dove, elevating his voice above the wind. "Yeah, yeah me too. But just think; soon we'll have all sorts of other problems."

"Titans, don't we already?" We both snatched up the raptor, eating it midair. When it was gone, I continued. "I mean, practically the entire world is against us."

Verthelion opened his jaws to speak, but closed them and growled. "Titans damned Old God. Told me that that included you."

"It doesn't. We're in this together." The Old God hadn't left Verthelion alone, either. But from what I could see, I was balancing its effects out very well.

"Thanks. Now, let's keep going."

"Yeah, let's finish this. We're almost there, _so close!_"

"I know. You've been saying that for a while. But you have a point. We can't rest. We won't be able to sleep either with this change so very close."

A shudder went through my scales. "Not close enough." We passed over the ditch with Alliance forces in it, far too high for them to notice, so high humidity from the sparse, fluffy sheep-wool clouds washed over me. I did swoops and somersaults in the air while fighting the winds, since it would likely be my last time to ever do so for the rest of my life. I dove, twirled and shot up countless times, while the green grass of the Arathi Highlands slowly crawled away beneath us, and by the time we reached the mountains that enclosed it, it was night time. A whole day of continuous flying; my wings felt like they were about to fall off. We found a little notch in the cliffs to sleep in, not too large and deep, but large enough, with quartz and mica reflecting off the walls in spite of the moss eeking out a living on it. To the left, through a small gap in the mountains, were the Hinterlands. The first time I had passed through, the land had smelled of autumn leaves, even though the time was completely wrong for that. It was the same this time around, the golden-green grass rippling as winds tore through the individual blades, the rustling as cones fell from conifers.

I sighed, laying down on the sun-warmed stone, absorbing the residual heat before it leaked away into the night, feeling like my muscles were unclenching from my bones. Oooh, yes. That felt so wonderful I let out a slight purr, which Verthelion echoed as he repeated the movement, and shared our body heat as we leaned against each other. He groaned. "We shouldn't stop. We're so close. We can - " He raised his head and let out a long, toothy yawn, which caused me to yawn as well. " - sleep." His head hit the stone, and I did to, too tired to fight it, too tired and nervous to dream.

* * *

><p>The river passed behind us, and we walked into Seradane. The smell of poison - Green flight poison - hung in the air like fog, overlapping the rustic smells of the Hinterlands behind us. It was late afternoon by the time we reached Seradane, a place we had often been told was 'infested' by the Green flight. Never-mind that the Green flight's Aspect has actually killed my mate once, Alysra's closed eyes had just been <em>creepy<em>. Mountains closed off Seradane from the outside world, and a huge tree, kilometers tall, dominated the middle. A little structure formed at its bottom, a white stone ramp leading up to a stone-enclosed portal shimmering various shades of green. But what I focused on, and what Verthelion was also no doubt focused on, was the twilight dragon sitting on his haunches at the top of the ramp, body almost, but not quite, hiding the portal from view.

His scales were a light-swallowing indigo-blue, and the webbing of his wings a white tinted with that same color. A drake sat next to him, a female and -

No way.

Verthelion evidently had the same thoughts, because we both broke into a flight infront of them, and Murdonia flew out from her perch next to the adult and slammed right into my mate full force, screaming Verthelion's name. I remembered Murdonia; she had been one of my clutch-mates, and though not one I considered a friend, she was also Verthelion's sister. After knocking Verthelion out of the sky, establishing that he was, in fact, real, and getting off him, I flew down next to her as well, while the adult just looked at us amused.

"Murdonia?" I inquired. "What are you doing here?"

"I should ask you the same thing! Weren't you supposed to be _dead_?"

"I'm very clearly not. Now answer the question, Murdonia."

"Well, I followed Pallasion here."

"Pallasion? Why'd he leave you here with whoever this is?" I motioned with my nose-horn to the adult, who had lain down next to us, observing the conversation. Now that he was closer, I could see that his wings binded to the tail, so it would resemble a bat's during flight. It wasn't particularly rare; about as rare as a mortal being left-handed instead of right, and I'd heard that the blue dragon Kalecgos had the same feature.

The adult spoke. "I didn't leave her. It's good to see you two again, though I must admit, I thought you were dead in the Bastion, and you in Hyjal, Verthelion."

"Pallasion?" my mate deadpanned. "What are you doing _here_? Of all places? I thought you were in Hyjal!"

"Well, I was." Pallasion stood up, his wings rising to show off how they were connected to his tail. Ironic; that pattern makes it easier to fly. "You clearly don't know, so I guess I should tell you. Our flight's scattered. There's so few of us we decided to run to every corner of Azeroth and hide. There are others, making groups around those who can sense the Red flight, and even though the Old God tells us to stop hiding like cowards and fight, we're smarter than that. Which was part of the reason why I'm with Murdonia." Verthelion nodded in agreement, but said nothing. It was true, Pallasion sensed the Black flight, hatched from one of the eggs Sinestra laid and then had corrupted. "And... my mate died. So while we've been here, we've decided that if we survive the century, we'll be mates."

Verthelion said what I thought. "This is bad. Scattered? How many of us are left?"

"I don't know, but not a lot. A few thousand, maybe. Probably fifteen-hundred. Now, it's your turn. How are you _not dead?_ Everyone who fought Ysera in Hyjal died!"

"Well, Selriona pushed me out of the fight and, we scattered." Not telling them how we turned 'traitor'. Good, since they didn't seem to know. "Selriona survived Lirastrasza's attack because someone saved her life, then she tried to find me. But enough of that, we need you to do something."

Pallasion glared, two sets of three 'tusks' unsheathing themselves from the back of his jaw. "What?"

"Well, we need to become adults, and we were told there would be someone who can do that here. Who'd have known it was you? I can't even recognize you."

Pallasion nodded, his glare vanishing and the tusks retreating into his head. "Sensible." He turned to Murdonia. "You might want to move away. If you get caught in the blast, bad things will happen."

Murdonia rolled her eyes. "Well of course bad things would happen!" She took to the air and flew up, landing on one of the giant tree's branches as shadows started to shimmer along Pallasion's scales. It was happening. It was actually happening. I was about to become fully mature. It used to seem so far away, as far away as the Crucible of Sargeras.

"Now, I should warn you." He closed his eyes and reared back his head, tail lifting off the ground. "The transition is a little bit more extreme than the first one. It can get a little rough. On the plus side, you don't need to be in the twilight realm." The shadows pooled toward his stomach, like a drop of water about to fall. Then Pallasion let them go, and the shadows dropped, just like Valiona had done. A massive shadow nova exploded outward from him, catching us both in the blast wave. I collapsed, fire exploding throughout my body, ripping at every scale, bone and tendon in my body. I quickly lost consciousness, and as I did, the sound of my own voice screaming steadily increased.

* * *

><p>I was in a tunnel, long and black, with various shapes flying at me and shattering like glass; a green trapezoid, a brown circle, an orange triangle, and each one <em>hurt<em>. The light at the tunnel's end slowly grew, but nearly fast enough. A torrent of voices surrounded me, some I recognized, some not.

_Probably higher than you -_

_You are a failure, Selriona!_

_No, no! Not mine, please!_

_I am going to win this fight._

I flew out of the tunnel into a white hemispherical room_, _my body still in horrendous pain, and Nalestrasza flew out of another tunnel on the otherside. She started to stand, but collapsed with a yipe. "Rrrgh! Damn it, why does this - ARGH! It wasn't so bad to become a drake."

I heaved, taking deep breaths through the metaphorical flames. "You... I heard you screaming?"

She tried to stand up, first raising her forelegs, but they quivered and collapsed, bringing a roar of pain from her. "Yes it was me!" she snapped. Well, there goes happy Nalestrasza. "This shouldn't hurt like this. The change must be so much greater than for the other flights - AH!"

A rush of water exploded from both tunnels, filling the chamber up to the bottom of my head, but not rising any further, and then the torrent shifted so that it would go right onto me, and instead of flowing around me the water just seeped into me, and no matter how much went into me, I didn't leak any, or inflate, and the same happened to Nalestrasza. "I'm guessing this is - RRRGH!" I gritted my teeth as something seemed to burrow into my bottom jaw, three points near the back. "I'm guessing this is my magic being unlocked."

"No sh - AH!" I felt what she screamed about. Blistering pain exploded behind both my eyes, and I felt them vibrate in their sockets. The flames started to manifest in reality as the torrent of water shut off, rising out of the water and licking at us both. Neither of us found the strength to speak as the flames continued to envelop us, mine violet and hers red. Soon, they stopped, but the internal bone-crushing pain returned as the joints in my legs seemed to shatter, and several invisible swords stabbed along my crest in a linear fashion. Then it stopped. Both me and my alternate self heaved heavily, taking in deep breaths even though it was just a dream, not real. Then abruptly, the dream ended.

* * *

><p>Everything hurt in a bigger area than it should have been possible. Tinnitus rang in my ear-plates, and I struggled to get to my feet. The ground flew away from me, and I let myself flop back down, only to try again. The world seemed to be reaching across to me from an iceberg, foggy and not quite there. I attempted to stand again, ignoring the blood pounding in my head and the weight behind my eyes. Something scratched my hind legs, and I brought my forelegs forward, falling back to the earth.<p>

Someone's voice attempted to reach me, but I could only make out words, not sound or tone. Who was it? _"Yeah, it's disorienting at first. You'll get used to it. Come on, Selriona, stand up. Verthelion is." _I growled, blinking my eyes several times to make the world come back into focus, and shaking my head to clear the tinnitus. I stood up, making sure not to scratch my hind legs with the spikes on the back of my forelegs. The world abruptly cleared entirely, and I shivered from the sensation that it brought. Something rippled within me, vast pools of energy within me that seemed to reach into Azeroth's core.

My magic.

"Verthelion? How are you feeling?" Verthelion stood up next to me. His scales had turned the same indigo-blue Pallasion's were, but didn't have the wing-extensions. Three tusks on the back of his jaw stood out, and his horns had exploded from behind his eyes, moving up and forming together like a colossus blade, with smaller horns along his crest moving back through the hole, as if threading a needle. I looked down at myself; I seemed to be the same, but my scales had turned from deep blue to a violet instead of pain along my body subsided entirely, and I could feel muscles in my jaw. I contracted them, and felt something - six somethings - slide into my head. I didn't need to hold the muscle contracted, but I relaxed it, and my own jaw-tusks slid back out. It was kind of like a switch gnomes use on their contraptions. If I concentrated enough, I could move one tusk at a time.

"I feel tall, and _powerful_." We both swung our heads towards Pallasion, who had sat down, with Murdonia next to him.

The acrophobic dragon spoke. "Well, you seem to be recovering. Yes, it hurts. Come on, get up. You're fine."

I growled at him. "We _are_ up."

Verthelion looked towards me. "Selriona, remember the plan?"

"What plan? Oh, that plan." _We'll go to them, and on the off chance they haven't been convinced, become adults. We'll be two to one, and convince them._

Murdonia cocked her head to the side. "What plan?"

I looked back to them. I could practice with the new implements of my body later. "Pallasion, Murdonia, there's something we need to talk to you about, and you're not going to like it."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. You have NO idea how good it felt to click that 'Add Chapter' button for this one.<br>**

**They're finally adults! Five year old adults, but still! 'squeals'!**

**Still some ground left to cover, though. OhGodIamsonervousinagoodway.  
><strong>


	34. Chapter 34:Savant

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does.**

* * *

><p>"No no no!" Murdonia shook her head below us. "No, you're lying."<p>

Verthelion sighed. "Why would we lie about something this important?"

"You're not lying!" Pallasion growled at him. "You're WRONG!"

"How could we be wrong?" I interjected. "I lived in Stormwind for months, among mortals, two of which who knew who I was, and still did not betray me. How can you explain that?"

"Exceptions!" Pallasion screeched. "They were the exceptions to the rule!" His tusks unsheathed themselves, which made me unconsciously take a step back.

"Then how come they were the ones she met?" My mate countered. "By all likeliness she should have met those who were not 'exceptions'."

"She got lucky!" Murdonia spoke in a low, threatening voice, even though she couldn't harm us, not anymore. Pallasion, on the other hand... his combat proficiency more than made up for his inability to fly, as he demonstrated multiple times in the Bastion, both against mortals and those who challenged him. Murdonia continued. "The only reason she is still alive is because she got _lucky!_ And how can the Reds be on the right side? They do not do their task, they allow all the death when their charge is to protect life! All that misery and sorrow because they do not simply annihilate the mortals."

"It is not their task to prevent death! It's to keep life going, and we've been fooled into thinking otherwise!" I told them. This was so much harder than with Verthelion. We'd been going back and forth for ten minutes, repeating the same things several times, yet they did not budge. But I had one more point that I could use. Pallasion started to open his mouth when I continued. "Think of it. What will happen if Deathwing prevails? Will he become sane? Will he stop _killing _everything? Or will he eradicate everything living, INCLUDING us?"

Pallasion's response shocked me. "Yes! Why wouldn't he?"

"Because the Old Gods control him, and last I checked, they don't like dragons, seeing as how their mortal enemies, the Titans, created us," Verthelion said. "They will make him kill everything, and everyone. Including us. To the Old Gods, we're just a tool."

I scanned my eyes around, still unaccustomed to my height. Murdonia looked so _small_. Even more amazing was the feel of vast reservoirs of power in my body, immense churning stores of magical power that had been completely inaccessible to me as a whelp. Even as a drake I could only draw enough for illusions and a portal without injuring myself, according to Nalestrasza. There was so _much_ power in me. And then there was the twilight realm. As a whelp I hardly knew of its existence, and as a drake it had been completely separate from the world, and when I was in it, the physical realm felt like it didn't exist. Not an absence, just that it wasn't _there_. Now, though, it felt like a lake that I hovered above; touching my claws, and I could sink into it with a thought. The artifact's chain had also grown around me to fit around my neck. I pulled myself back to the argument at hand.

"-useless," Pallasion said with finality, but he looked beaten. "What can we do? We help Deathwing, we die. We don't, we die because sooner or later the Reds _will_ find us. And I still don't trust your 'mortals aren't evil' theory. Look at all they've done. War, plague, the undead..."

"Not their creation, natural, and not their creation," Verthelion rattled off, eviscerating Pallasion's argument in seconds. "We're not wrong about this. The mortals have caused the majority of the wars throughout history, yes, but they are also the most populous, aren't they? So it would stand to reason they wage more wars. The Red flight defends life, it does not prevent death. There's a large difference between the two, and we've been fooled by the Old Gods into thinking it was the latter that they were assigned by the Titans. Even if you reject those, you can not argue that aiding Deathwing is foolish, because everyone dies if he wins, as opposed to if he loses, where we still die, but millions more live, AND we have a chance, however small, at survival."

Murdonia groaned, laying down and placing her claws around her ear-plates. "I don't like this. It goes against _everything_ we've ever seen. How can all that be wrong?"

"Quite easily," I told her. "We lived in a war-zone, of course the opposing side is going to kill us at any chance they get. They don't exactly have the _option_ of not killing us. All you've ever seen is the warlike side of the mortals. I've seen the peaceful side, and let me tell you right now, there are a LOT more mortals who do not fight in the war than those who do, and that is a fact."

Pallasion sighed, and looked at my mate. "Alright then. So what's your plan? What do we do with this new and world-changing information you've given us? The other flights will still eradicate us. The mortals who find us will still try to kill us. Nothing's changed."

"Not necessarily," he countered. "If we know the Red flight _is not corrupt_, we can attempt diplomacy with them. We can ask them for help."

I nodded. "The Reds, and probably everybody else, thinks we are controlled by the Old Gods." My mother had thought that... stop clenching, heart. "If we can prove them wrong, they might be willing to help."

Pallasion chuckled. "All right then. Help with what?" That caught me. How could they help us? Thankfully, Verthelion answered.

"You said our kin have scattered. Hid. That would make it easier for us to die out, after all, many small blocks of ice melt faster than a singular large one. If the Reds know the truth, they won't attack us."

"And what about after?" Murdonia interjected. "The others will still think the Reds are corrupt. Titans, I still do, somewhat, in spite of your argument. They'll survive, they'll attack the Red flight, and we're back to square one!"

"Not if we can get to them first," I told her. "Not if we can convince them like we convinced you two." _Mostly_ convinced them. Just like Verthelion at first, they too held reservations. "But our first order has to be to talk to the Red dragonflight. The higher up in the chain of command, the better."

Verthelion nodded. "Yes. As we go up the hierarchy, our chances of survival decline immensely, as they have more power. Except..."

All three of us looked to him, Pallasion echoing his, "Except?"

"Except at the top. Alexstrasza. From what I hear, she is very sympathetic towards all life. She'll listen to us, hopefully."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I cut in. "Maybe _she'll _listen to us, but who's to say the others around her will? She's mostly at Wyrmrest, isn't she? Verthelion, we will be blown out of the sky the moment we get within a kilometer of the place, and suddenly materializing in it through the twilight realm isn't going to go over well."

"Hmm, true, true." Verthelion closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. "All right. We'll head to the Vermillion Redoubt. From what we saw from the Bastion, they're fairly high up on the hierarchy, and we'd have a chance. First, though, we, that is Selriona and I, need to know more about our capabilities. We've been adults for not even an hour."

Pallasion nodded. "The magic is the most important change. It works something like this. I know a spell for creating a patch of twilight flame that persists without fuel. First, you need to draw up the energy, and create the proper containment, so it doesn't escape." Pallasion's words practically mirrored those that I had read on the boat. I knew how to do this.

I could do this.

I drew up power from my vast 'mana pool', as the book had described it, and my eyes flickered runes around in a spherical fashion, ones that I knew from opening a twilight portal, runes that I knew by heart. A small bit of the energy left the mass in my mouth, forming a container that kept the ball of twilight fire in a ball. I placed runes inside it, floating within the magical orb. The first one was a rune that caused the desired magic to release when the raw power of the flames were released, and I placed another rune after it, a rune to infuse the area with fire, linked in a fashion that created a 'line' of magical power, crossing one end of the orb to the other to create a diameter, with the rune's shape manipulated after a quick mental calculation to drain the power at a certain rate, to determine the strength of the flames. I could put more power into it, letting it last longer at higher levels, but decided against it. As it stood, I would release the blast. It would crash into something and the frail invisible, runic container around it would shatter, releasing the flames and then the runes would take effect.

I launched it at a patch of grass. Sure enough, the ball of twilight power slammed right into the ground with the force of a thunderbolt and the surrounding ten meters caught violet flame, and after a few short seconds, the energy in the spell expired and with it, the flame. The aftermath; a circular ring of sterilized, eradicated ground. Pallasion's mouth dropped. "Yes... like that. Have you _ever_ done magic like that before?"

I shook my head. "No, only twilight portals and illusions. Why?"

"Because... that spell took me an hour to successfully cast the first time."

I felt blood rush through my head. "Oh... did it? Because that was _really_ simple."

"Uh _huh_," Pallasion sarcastically agreed. "Um, Verthelion, can you try?"

"Yes, brother. Go ahead, show us," Murdonia echoed.

"Hmm, all right." Verthelion closed his eyes. I saw small bits of fire licking in and out of his teeth. He spat out a fireball, but it did nothing but explode. "I'll have to work on that. Anything else we should know how to do, Pallasion?"

"Hmm, the twilight realm. You can feel it, can't you?" We nodded. "Try sinking into it, various amounts. You need to get used to being in two places at once. It's not hard, but it's _strange _when you first do it."

I looked over at Verthelion, and nodded. "Lets go, then."

He nodded his head. "Alright. You first."

"Okay." I let myself 'sink' into the twilight realm. Instantly I felt my consciousness shatter and reform itself, duplicated. My mental capacity doubled, and I saw through two pairs of eyes at once. My twilight self saw Seradane covered in stone, with the portal and mountains the only feature, and a diminishing violet fog where my spell had hit. I tried to move my twilight self, but found myself unable. When I moved my physical self's head, my twilight self also moved. I spoke to Verthelion.

"This is _weird._ My twilight self seems bound to my physical self. I'm going in deeper." I did, feeling the shadows of the twilight realm begin to flow along my scales as I sunk in deeper. My twilight self moved its head on its own, and I stepped away from where my physical self was. Shadows rippled out from me, pulsing harshly, grinding at any non-twilight life they might find. I looked down at myself, and saw that my physical self was still completely solid, but my twilight self virtually invisible. Moving my lips was such an odd sensation, as I both moved them and didn't. The torrent of sensory information, double what I was accustomed to, added zero strain on my mind.

"Come on in, Verthelion. This is interesting, to say the least." In the physical world, nothing changed, but in the twilight realm, Verthelion appeared as a ghostly image of himself, only his bare outlines visible. "Keep going," I said in the twilight realm. His ghostly self solidified a little more, colors starting to flow in. Shadowy ripples started to radiate with him, clashing and resonating with my own.

"Like this? Interesting. I wonder what happens if we go in farther." No sooner did he say this than his form began to solidify more and more, becoming less transparent as my physical self noticed that Verthelion there became less and less visible. "This is incredible. Whoa, hold on..." His twilight self became entirely physical, and his physical self only an outline, and it snapped to Verthelion's twilight self.

"Alright, so if we're too much in one realm, in the other we'll be just an illusion, it looks like."

"I agree. Let's go back." Verthelion started to shift out, and I followed him, emerging completely out of the twilight realm moments after him, shadows running off my scales like water and dissipating on the ground.

Pallasion nodded to us. "Good. I see you've got that down."

"Yes, simple enough," Verthelion said. "So, we go to the Vermillion redoubt, right?"

Murdonia sighed. "I guess we are. I don't like this, this is a _bad_ plan. I'm not sure about your 'mortals aren't evil and the Reds aren't corrupt' theory, but if what you've said is true..."

"It is," I interjected. "Come on, let's fly." I started to ascend when Pallasion cut in.

"Whoa whoa whoa, hold on. You mean let's _walk_."

Each of us groaned. "Come on, Pallasion! Seriously?" Verthelion complained.

"I will have heart failure from fear if I do, especially from here to the Twilight Highlands!"

My eye twitched. Oh yeah, that's Pallasion. "Fine, we'll walk," Verthelion decided. "I honestly can't believe - incredibly important, and we walk!" he mumbled to himself. Pallasion looked _extremely _proud of himself. He and Verthelion took the lead walking out of Seradane, while I stayed behind with Murdonia, who had to fly every now and then to keep up with our naturally faster pace.

"So Murdonia, what happened with you after I supposedly died?"

"Well, those two got transferred to Hyjal, you know that. I stayed in the Bastion for a while, until it fell." She sighed remorsefully, and I could sympathize with her. So many memories, crumbled to dust. "After that, all of us left there scattered. Pallasion found me by pure luck hiding in the mountains here." As if to prove her point, we walked up a steep incline, my legs easily reaching up the hills while Murdonia flew up them. "He drove the Green flight out of Seradane, and we made our home there, and then there was a chunk of time where not much happened, and then you two arrived. Pallasion was an adult by the time he got here, but when that happened, I don't know. So, how did you cast that spell so fast? Pallasion had quite a bit of trouble, and I'm guessing Verthelion will too."

"To be honest, I don't know. The runes just made _sense_ to me. I could tell how they fit together, and what they had to do. It's trivial."

"Hmm. Wonder if you can do anything else?"

"I can try. Let's see... Oh, I've got an idea." Keeping half my mind focused on walking, I brought flames into my crop, and began to pour my magic into the prepared blast. I sent the mental command to infuse the fire with the magic, then began to shape the runes, a container not needed since the blast was natural. The runes flew over my eyes easily, and each one that I wove took next to no energy. A rune to carry out a specific sequence of spells took a lot of power, and attached to it I infused the sequence needed to open a portal, so that inside my crop the line of runes looked like a clothesline strung across the fireball, with a single strand hanging down near the end. Satisfied, I let the blast explode from my maw to a small field of grass to my left.

The twilight flames exploded, incinerating every blade with their corrupting blaze, before the magic took hold. Mana warped as the runes carried out their instructions, opening a portal to the twilight realm. But without my power to sustain it, the portal closed half a minute later. All three of the others looked at me, jaws open. Verthelion spoke first. "All right then... that is really impressive. You should pace yourself, though. Didn't you say something about magic causing dehydration?"

I swallowed. Was my throat actually drying out, or was that just me? "Oh, yes. Thanks for reminding me. Let's keep going. The Vermillion Redoubt isn't going to come to us, after all."

He laughed. "Oh no, it won't. Come on." He climbed over a hill, and, placing his weight on the trees infront of him, collapsed the natural barrier they created with a cacophony of crashing branches, squawking birds and crunching leaves. He turned his head to Pallasion. "You DO realize it's your fault we'll be moving so slowly, right?"

"Yes, sure, Verthelion. And I'll be _right here_, caring." The growl that resonated in Verthelion's throat made me flinch, but Pallasion didn't so much as acknowledge his aggression.

We passed the mountain and walked down, and passed the river with us flying over the deep river and Pallasion swimming over, using his wings as paddles. I sighed in exasperation at the flight-less dragon. _Honestly_. But I had other things to worry about. For one, my magic. How did I know how to shape it? How could I know what the runes were, even having read the book? It all seemed so trivial, whelp's play, but Pallasion had apparently taken hours to use the first one I had. Already, part of my mind began buzzing with ideas on new spells, and so that it wouldn't distract me I split slightly into the twilight realm, the slightest amount, and let my twilight self continue to construct spells in her mind. With that out of the way, my physical self continued to ponder on why it seemed so easy to me. Perhaps it had something to do with the magical strength Verthelion had told me about? Maybe.

My physical self looked forward, following the two males while my twilight self began to babble to herself about the possibilities with the capacitor and wondering why I didn't need runes for an illusion.

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

"And I'm saying, you'll HAVE to fly to the Vermillion redoubt. You and I both know this, you're just in denial," I argued with Pallasion as we took shelter in a small cave, using our mortal forms. While using said illusion had been easier and easier as I kept using it, it still strained me immensely. Now that I was fully grown, however, it was just as easy it seemed to be for Selriona. Even now, at the far end of the cave with Murdonia, checking for anything unfriendly that might be hidden in the cracks, she _pulsed_, waves of magical energy resonating around her, resonating dully in the air. She had been the second to enter her mortal form in the cave, after Pallasion, and the moment she did she collapsed to the ground. I had panicked, and quickly shifted so that I could help her, only to find out why she collapsed.

The latent energy in me, my magic, seemed to increase threefold. Where before it seemed like every one of my scales held a small amount of explosives in it, now it felt like they were furnaces, generating vast amounts of energy continuously. It wasn't an exactly energetic feeling, just a powerful one. Apparently the mortal body's solution to losing the strength of my true form; increasing its magic.

"So what if I am in denial? I am _- not -_ flying all the way up that mountain!"

"It's not even two kilometers tall!" I countered.

"Like I said, _all the way up there!_" the indigo haired orc snapped at me. I snarled. Pallasion's... unique problem placed huge problems on our travel. We needed to get to the Red flight as soon as possible. Diplomacy. It was a long shot, but it was our only chance. If we could convince the other flights to stop attacking us, we could go persuade the others of our kind. After that, though... I don't know. But at the moment, Pallasion caused us large problems with his fear of heights.

_He slows you down. Leave him behind, leave him to rot,_ the Old God whispered to me. It had been doing so for so long, and the scary part was that I could feel myself wearing down. Selriona helped me so much, but this was an _Old God_. I couldn't hold out forever.

_I am not leaving him behind_, I snarled at it. _We need him. Four of our kind is more persuasive than three. _"We'll just walk fast, then. Unless you have another idea, or Selriona figures out how to create a portal there. But the point still stands that you _can not_ climb the Vermillion Redoubt! It's too steep, and we'll have to stay behind to protect you, and then once the Reds trigger the alarm, it'll take longer for them to reach us, longer for them to prepare to roast us!"

"_Fine,_" he spat. "I'll fly at the Titans-damned redoubt. But not anywhere else."

"Titans, Pallasion..." _He refuses to obey you. He does this because he shall betray you. Kill you. Kill him first. _"SHUT UP!" I roared at the Old God.

"Excuse me?"

"Not you, the Old God that's been hounding me ever since Selriona saved me in Hyjal. Isn't it talking to you?"

"Yes, it is. It doesn't want us to betray it, does it?"

"Exactly. Now think, if we're doing something an Old God DOES NOT want us to do, then we must be doing the right thing."

"I guess you have a point. Wait a second..." Pallasion started glaring at me, orcish eyes focused intensely. "Oh, hohoho. I see it now. Of course. I didn't think anything about it first, but NOW it makes sense!"

"What does?"

"There's a spell on us, all four of us I'd wager, and the rest of our flight. I've known about it for a while, but I always just assumed it was a spell that never got dispelled, or was too much of a hassle to do so. It links us to the Old Gods, allows them to talk to us no matter where we are. Didn't matter to me all this time, after all, they hardly ever spoke to me. I see it now. A safety net, in case any of us go completely and totally rogue. Like we are now."

"So if what I'm hearing is right, we have a spell on us that lets the Old Gods talk to us no matter where we are compared to them. How long have we had this?" A faint glimmer of hope sparked in my chest. If this spell is what kept me harassed by the Old God, then if it was dispelled...

I'd be free of them forever.

"Can you dispel it?"

"Hmm, no, it's too complicated." _He is capable of it, but refuses. He wishes for you to suffer. Why do you think you do not see the spell on them? He has already dispelled it from the others._

I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.

He shool his head. "I can't make horns or tails of it. However, there is somebody who might."

"And who would that be?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"Your magical savant of a mate. Did you _see_ how quickly she figured out those spells?"

I nodded. "I did. I'm still trying to figure it out." I brought up my energy into another twilight fireball, and formed the magic into a container. While I was a drake, my flames had been less magical and more of where my flames had shapeshifted to, but now...

A vast sequence of runes made themselves known in my mind, and I couldn't figure out which I needed. I picked one, and then strung another from it, no clue what either did. The calculations I needed didn't present themselves, just like all the other times, and so the spell's power slowly leaked out of the container, until the fireball dissipated and brought a growl out of me.

"It takes time to find the correct rune. You need the one that looks like this." Pallasion knelt and moved his finger along the stone pseudo-drawing a Common 'S' with two dots in one end. "That one says 'If a spell container shatters, then activate the rune attached'. The rune that you need to attach looks something like this." He then pretended to draw a rune that could only be described as an upside-down scale within a scale, with 3 'S's protruding from the larger one. "That one says 'Blanket the area surrounding it in the type of energy in the spell'. You need to quickly calculate how fast you want the energy to burn, to determine how strong the fire is and, as a result, how quickly it uses up the energy and expires. Watch."

Pallasion stood and held out a hand. Twilight fire slowly faded into his palm. "See, I'm placing the container around it." The chaotic, shifting flames suddenly went rigged, forming a perfect sphere. "Now I'm stringing the first rune, now the second one, I have to calculate, but it's not hard." No visible change occurred, though. "Alright, here it goes!" Pallasion threw out his hand and the ball of fire crashed into the stone cavern floor, exploding. Once the explosion faded, the stone continued to crackle with violet fire for ten seconds before fizzling out. "Now you try."

I did as he told me, bringing up my flames and containing them, and them searching for the correct runes in my mind, imagining them strung together. I quickly, knowing what to do, calculated the rate of combustion, and threw out my hand, the fully formed spell exploding out and covering the stone in fabulously crackling flames. "Oh, wow. Thank you for the assistance."

"It's no problem, the hard part is figuring out what runes to use and how, not to mention doing the calculations in your head on the fly. Takes practice. Come on, let's go see if Selriona can't help with the Old God spell on us." The flames went out.

"Alright." We walked down into the depths of the cave, looking at the rounded sides and corroded stalagmites. What could have caused that?

We found Selriona at the far end of the cave, looking at the wall with violet energy streaming around her hands. She thrust her hands out at a piece of cave moss, and a flickering violet light engulfed it, sputtered, then went out. She growled, then almost instantaneously cast the spell again.

Violet light completely enveloped the plants, swirling around it and giving it a sickly appearance more than the color should have. After a few moments, a massive shadow nova rocked the area around it, shattering the magic and completely obliterating the moss.

"Selriona," I said, catching her attention.

She whirled around. "Verthelion, I didn't hear you." She walked up to me and put her arms around me, some mortal show of affection. Something she picked up in Stormwind, likely. She let go.

"Pallasion says that we have some kind of spell on us, which allows the Old God to talk to us all the time. Since you seem to have an _uncanny_ talent for magic," She rubbed the back of her head. "We were hoping you could dispel it from us."

"What spell? I don't see anything on either of you." _She lies. She sees it only on you, but refuses to lend her aid._

_Shut up! We both know that you are lying!_ I mentally growled at the Old God.

"You don't?" Pallasion inquired in a disappointed tone. "Hmm, guess you have to be an adult for a while to see it. Where's Murdonia?"

"She's sleeping in the other end of the cave in her true form. I'm going to practice my magic, there's just so many possibilities!" She sounded like she might have exploded from excitement any second. In the far corner of my mind, I noticed her artifact had blue tendrils snaking out of it and recharging the gray power inside.

"Would you mind helping us? If we're going to be going to the Red flight, we need to be able to defend ourselves until we can talk to them." Pallasion's lips curled as I said this, still not entirely convinced. My mate's apparent flair for spells alarmed me to a certain extent; not only did I constantly worry she'd overexert herself and I'd lose her again, but if she didn't, she'd become quite powerful, and the Old God could play off -

_She already begins her climb to power. She will dispose of you, and siphon your power for herself, before ending your life_.

-of that. I didn't mention the Old God to her that time; she didn't need to know of all the times, she didn't need to worry.

"Sure, come on. So, I have this idea for a spell, where you basically weave it into a fireball just before launching it, so that it'll track whatever you want it to until one or the other is disposed of." She began to explain how to go about doing this spell, even though she herself had no idea. But by the time she finished explaining, she seemed to know, and easily blasted a thrown rock even though her aim was deliberately off. We kept practicing, neither of us close to her skill. How had she gotten so good so fast? I'd have time to figure that out later. After all, we were adults now, fully grown. We could go a _lot_ longer without sleep, unlike my sister.

* * *

><p>Descending into the Arathi Highlands proved to be hell without flying. Pallasion had no problems, of course, being used to walking everywhere. We could fly sometimes, but we'd always have to circle around back to the acrophobic. Slowly but surely, however, we descended. This was the second time I had ever seen these Highlands. Selriona's third time. I walked on the ground as the noon sun slowly began its trek downward to the horizon. Selriona's skill with magic continued to alarm me, but when I asked her about it she said that it just 'comes to me naturally'. I shrugged, and continued to walk forward, the others behind me and Murdonia stretching her wings above. The air was moist and humid, with enormous storm clouds climbing the sky as thermal after thermal joined them.<p>

One such storm cloud drifted above us, slowly blotting out the sun as the ominous black clouds creeped toward and past us. Flashes of lightning blasted the sparse trees, and the wind whipped the grass into rippling waves of dark and bright green, and the clouds above us into rings. The wind chill seeped into my scales, permeating my horns and gripping my bones, making my movements sluggish and my mind slow. The others felt the same; Murdonia had to land to avoid dropping out of the sky, and Selriona's eyelids drooped.

I opened my jaws, letting out a yawn so loud it half became a roar at the end. "We need to use the twilight realm. It'll help."

My mate nodded. "Yeah, I'm about to pass out. See you there." She faded out, becoming a mere outline of herself. I too went down, seeing her releasing rippling shadows that resonated with my own, as my physical self became an illusion. Moments later, Pallasion, along with Murdonia, phased in. Pallasion's shadows, combined with those of me and Selriona, created orbs of twilight energy, knots where the shadows coalesced. They floated around, violent energies whirling inside them, dissipating harmlessly after a period of time when our waves no longer resonated there, but new ones formed just as fast. Murdonia made the mistake of poking one, and the energies unbound themselves in a shadow nova that, while its energy didn't hurt her, the shockwave knocked her into another... then another... and another.

"I'm fine!" She moaned, wriggling her way off her back. The twilight realm's temperature was consistent, as always. Soon enough, I had warmed enough to not be threatened by collapsing at every second step. I had an idea.

_Stabilize, stop releasing waves into the twilight realm_. Sure enough, the ripples I gave out stopped, and soon the orbs vanished. "You can get that to stop by telling yourself to stabilize, just like how you can stop sensing a flight."

"Hmm, you can?" inquired Pallasion. Moments later, he stopped sending out pulses, followed by Selriona. "What do you know, you can. Never had reason to find that out."

"Yeah, will be good if the situation is needed..." Murdonia glared at all three of us. "Like me not getting knocked around."

"Alright, come on let's keep going." Selriona briefly flared out her tusks. "We _need_ to move."

I nodded. "You're right. Come on, let's go." I took the lead, the others following behind me. Within the twilight realm we had so much more energy, and the Arathi highlands moved past us almost as fast as if we flew in the physical realm. Soon, we would be arriving in the Wetlands.

"Hold on!" I looked back at Selriona. "Verthelion, there's something in the physical realm," she continued. "Titans, we need to get out!" She vanished into the physical realm, my illusion there showing her flying as quickly as she could toward something in the distance... something with violet scales...

"A dragonspawn, let's go!" I flew over to where they were, my illusion letting my keep my bearings in the real world. Once I was close enough, I pulled myself entirely out of the twilight realm to get a good look. The dragonspawn was a female, with pointed ears hidden under a cowl and soft spikes off her elbows and running down the tail. She ran toward us at an insane speed, faded replicas of herself trailing behind. She stopped when she noticed me, and abruptly fell to her forelegs.

I stood over her. "Who are you?"

"I am Aerliona, scout for General Vajarn. He told me to go across the Thandol span and see if there is any movement from the Red flight."

"There isn't any," Pallasion said, phasing out of the twilight realm with Murdonia, who sat on her haunches. "We've been coming down from the north. Who is General Vajarn?"

"He was one of the commanders in the operations down in Deepholme, and we've escaped to the surface. We've been taking casualties, though. Horrible ones. He intends to lead us to safety up north, hidden in Hillsbrand." She eyed all four of us. "We could use your help. The drakes we had with us died before we could escape Deepholme, and the Reds have used this to their advantage."

"How many of you does Vajarn still command?" I asked.

"Two dozen, including myself and excluding himself." Aerliona shivered. "There had been so many more..."

I looked at Selriona, then to Pallasion, and then my sister. An understanding passed between us. Go help Vajarn, and try to convince him and his dragonspawn. We'd need as many on our side as we could. "We have information vital to our flight." I didn't miss Pallasion and Murdonia's scowl in the corner of my eye. I couldn't blame them; I had been like that after Selriona had first told me. "We will go to General Vajarn and tell him, as well as aid you."

The dragonspawn nodded. "Thank you. Vajarn is currently trekking through the Wetlands, dangerously close to the Vermillion Redoubt. He can sense the Red flight, but even so, they'd be vastly outnumbered."

Pallasion stepped forward, looking down at the dragonspawn. "So time is of the essence then." He looked up at the horizon. "We'd better get going then, it's only a matter of time before the Red flight finds Vajarn." He faded a little, and I got the message, sinking partially into the twilight realm, where he continued talking, but only to me. "We can convince them, too. If we want to convince the Red flight, we'll need a lot of backing. Two dozen dragonspawn would help, not to mention helping them survive." Selriona phased in.

"I say we need to go now." In the physical realm, she told Aerliona, "Can you guide us to General Vajarn?"

"I can," the dragonspawn responded.

"Verthelion we need to go help now," Pallasion told me.

"I agree. Let's get going." At the same time, my physical self said, "We will help, now bring us to him."

Aerliona nodded. "Follow me, he's this way." She started whizzing away, replicas of herself echoing behind. Some speed spell, no doubt. I had to sink almost entirely into the twilight realm to keep up with her pace.

A scout, indeed. I could only hope that this 'Vajarn' would listen to reason, and those who followed him would do the same.

And, of course, that they still lived when I told him how we were brainwashed.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	35. Chapter 35:Savior

**Disclaimer:**** I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for betaing.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

Aerliona led us rapidly down towards the Thandol span. Whatever spell she used to move so fast, I needed to figure it out. The processes of magic were so much more complex than I could have imagined, so many possibilities, and things could go so wrong if you didn't calculate one of the variables right. I'd found that out the hard way earlier; the explosion wasn't _supposed _to continue in a line behind it, like some sort of dive-bomb, but that didn't matter to the tree. Behind us, the storm had grown, staying at our backs with winds the whipped at Murdonia and Aerliona in the physical realm, but passed through our illusion-selves. Sometimes I briefly pulled myself out of the twilight realm slightly to feel the strength of the winds; they did not abate. If I glanced behind, I could see a circular section of cloud noticeably lower than the rest, with a vortex of dark clouds plowing across the earth, trees and dirt swirling around it and the occasional lightning flash that would light up the swirling, howling funnel of the tornado. I wasn't particularly worried, though; the tornado was several kilometers off, and we could always bring the others into the twilight realm for safety.

Aerliona took the lead with Verthelion and Murdonia staying next to her, one using the twilight realm and one flying to keep up with the dragonspawn, and I followed with Pallasion at my side.

"You're not fully convinced, are you?" I asked.

Pallasion shook his head. "This just goes against everything I've ever seen and heard. It's hard to accept all that being wrong. How did you figure it out?"

"The Old Gods told me my brood-mother abandoned me to the faceless. I figured out that they lied, and then I wondered, 'what else have they lied about?'. I went to Stormwind, and that just reinforced that what we'd known was wrong."

"But I don't have anything reinforced. I have yet to see any example. Murdonia and I, we're taking your word for it. It's not easy..."

"Don't tell me, the Old God?" I guessed.

He nodded. "It's constantly talking to me. More than ever. How have you not gone insane yet? How has Verthelion not gone insane?"

"Well, if you want to know, I have a sort of sentient dream in my head that's blocking them." Pallasion's gave me a look that screamed 'you're not serious'. "Don't ask. It started when I accidentally drank a potion of Nightmares." Was forced to. "Nasty stuff. But as for Verthelion, I just keep off-setting what the Old God tells him. So, you can really see this spell on us that lets them talk to us wherever we are?"

"Yes, I can. I can see the weaving, but its so tangled, I can't understand it. I've found out that to dispel magic you need to pluck at certain parts of the spell in just the right order, and there's a pattern, but this is just so complicated..."

"Why can you see it, but not me?"

Pallasion shrugged his wings. "Beats me. If I had to guess, it's because you haven't been fully grown as long."

I sighed. "Great. How long do you think we'll need?"

He raised his snout into the air. "Oh, a couple days, maybe. That's about how long it took me."

I growled. "Great, just great. So anyway, have you heard of this General Vajarn?"

He smiled. "No, I don't think so, but if he's who I think he is, then yeah. I'd heard of someone leading hit-and-runs within Deepholme. Whoever did that was a tactical mastermind, and I have a good feeling that it's him."

"So why haven't I heard about him?" I extended the two of my tusks farthest back in an expression of curiosity.

"Probably because you 'died' in the Bastion, where we were kind of busy. Anyway, apparently whoever did the attacks had a fair sized command, four dozen I think. He led devious sabotages and sneak attacks on mortals, and not once did they find him out, not once was he discovered."

I shifted more into the physical realm to be greeted with a gust of wind. I curled my physical claws on a clump of dirt surrounding a stone, while my twilight self nodded thoughtfully. I sunk back into the twilight realm, my physical self turning into an illusion again. "He sounds like he'd listen to reason, he sounds smart. That should make it easier to convince him, if it is him."

Verthelion's twilight self fell back to us, but his physical self continued to run next to Aerliona. "Definitely. And if he's as good a leader as he sounds, then those under his command should listen to him more eagerly."

"It does pose the question as to why he wasn't put higher up, if he's so good," I asked.

"Well, only he really knows that," Pallasion answered. "But it doesn't matter now. The point is, he can help us k- fight off anyone who attacks us."

"Like the cult?" Verthelion asked.

"WHAT?" both versions of Pallasion exclaimed at once, drawing a confused look from Murdonia and Aerliona. "Nothing," he said in the physical realm while in the twilight realm he continued. "Why would the cult attack us? No, scratch that, how would they KNOW to attack us?"

"The Old God," we both answered simultaneously.

Verthelion continued. "It's telling the cult about our betrayal, pitting them against us. They'll fight us at one point or another, definitely."

Pallasion's fangs gritted against each other. "Great, well, that's just perfect, isn't it?" He turned his head forward, and I followed his eyes to the Thandol span, now even more crumbled than before as the elements continued battering it since last I'd seen it. I pulled myself entirely out of the twilight realm, feeling my consciousness retract to normal. I walked up next to Aerliona.

"So, just on the other side of this, right?" I asked.

She nodded. "He should be getting close, we'd probably rendezvous not to long after we get across." She placed a foreleg gingerly on the bridge, listening to it groan as she did. "You'll need to fly, we can't have this bridge collapsing, can we?" Behind me, I practically heard Pallasion's heart skip a beat.

"Fly?" he squeaked.

Aerliona looked back at him. "There is no way the bridge will support your weight. I don't understand the problem here, what's wrong with flying?"

Murdonia snickered.

"Pallasion is acrophobic," Verthelion explained with a quivering smile.

Said acrophobic spread out his wings. "Oh yes, haha, let's all mock the one who's afraid of heights. Oh don't give me that look, you were all thinking it. I'll fly if I absolutely have to." The smell of his fear reached my nostrils. I raised my weight onto my hind legs and took off, hovering over the earth, each beat of my wings sending pebbles scattering, only for them to stick into the ground when they stopped. Verthelion took off as well, joining me and Murdonia while the dragonspawn raced across the crumbled, half-collapsed bridge.

His wing extensions counteracted his fear-filled slow flying, letting him marginally keep up with us, and Murdonia occasionally let out a screech to let him know he was going the right way since his eyes were screwed shut. Aerliona passed underneath us, and soon enough we were inhaling the steam of the Wetlands.

"Are we high up?" Pallasion asked once we had arrived into a hover at the other end. I could hear his thunderous, rapid heartbeat.

My mate looked down at the near-kilometer drop we had ascended to. "Not much, no. Just go down slowly, that's it, gently..."

Much whimpering later, Pallasion's claws touched the ground, sinking slightly into the marsh. We just sighed and shook our head as Aerliona caught up to us. "General Vajarn is this way, just follow me." She started to head off the road, but Verthelion stopped her, placing a massive foreleg in her path.

"Hold on, I feel something." His pupils contracted and all 6 of his tusks emerged with a _shwing_. "Reds. Right ahead."

Aerliona's hands caught fire, twilight flame rippling around her claws. "They've found us. You need to help, come on!" She sped away into the growth.

Taking flight and moving after her, I too soon felt the pulsing. Several dozen dragonspawn, and four drakes circling an area. Verthelion led the way, with Murdonia and I behind him and Pallasion's faded outline running behind the two of us, most of him in the twilight realm. I began to bring up energy from my mana pool, only roughly a quarter drained, shaping it and providing the If-then calculations, region searching, and just like Samuel had back in Stormwind, drew small bits of arcane energy from my artifact to keep the spell's energy from going down as it naturally faded into the environment.

The fight came into view; it was a massacre. The red drakes flew around, pelting roughly seven dragonspawn with fireballs from above. In the woods, a massive plated twilight dragonspawn stood, wings outstretched, firing blasts of twilight energy into the air to intercept said fireballs, but one always got through. And the ground fight was miserable as well; roughly thirty red dragonspawn against the remaining _seven_ of our flight, about one and a half dozen dead with their corpses scattered throughout, casters standing back to try in vain to nullify the red flight's magic.

Verthelion took a deep breath and let out a glass-shattering roar, causing the fight to pause and for all eyes to redirect to us before the fight resumed, one side with more conviction, one with far less. Then I released my spell, leaving my capacitor with roughly half its energy left.

It didn't do what it was supposed to.

It had been supposed to search the entire area around me for twilight energy and when it did, it would regenerate their flesh, healing wounds. What it instead did was heal the trees that had been _covered_ by twilight energy, and branches arced through the fight, separating individuals briefly, and as the Red flight came to their senses, two more dragonspawn died and another got nailed on the back with a fireball, breaking his back and setting him aflame. Stupid, stupid, I should have scanned for twilight dragonkin, not the energy!

One of the drakes screeched, senses coming to them. "Retreat, retreat!" They scattered, heading back towards the Vermillion redoubt, away from us, their signals getting fainter and fainter. Smart. We set down in the woods and contracted to our mortal forms, save for Murdonia. The winged dragonspawn, no doubt General Vajarn, stepped forward. One of his left fangs was missing, and the plate armor his chest had been dented in several places, not to mention splattered with soot.

Verthelion stepped forward while the other dragonspawn cremated their dead and gathered around us. "General Vajarn, I assume?" he asked.

He nodded. "My thanks, we'd be dead if you hadn't shown up when you did. The blasted Red flight saw us. I sensed them coming from a distance away, but we were horribly outnumbered. Took a few of them with us, though, fight their corruption as much as possible."

Verthelion grimaced. "Yes, see, we need to talk to you about that."

"We will, soon. Right now, I need to tend to the others. I know healing magic; I've needed it a lot of times." A smile tugged at Vajarn's lips, but he shoved it down, moving over to a groaning male with green eyes and a deep gash along the side of his face, with his axe, braided with violet metal, on the ground a meter from him. "Stay still, Cauterlion." Shadow energy glowed around Vajarn's hand, and the gash faded to a scar. Overall, five dragonspawn beside the General survived, and I learned their names as he went around healing the survivors; Aerliona I already knew, Sheralion, Turliona, Feraliona, and Cauterlion. Finally, he returned to me, Murdonia, Verthelion and Pallasion.

"You said you needed to talk to me. What is it?"

Verthelion sighed. "You might want to sit down."

* * *

><p>Sheralion shook his head, the scar under his eyes catching and releasing shadows. "I just can't believe it. But it makes sense!" Sheralion's eyes darted around his companions, and over the three dragons sitting next to the dragonspawn. "We've been fooled all this time. I can't believe it..."<p>

Turliona placed her arm around his neck. "I know. What now? Verthelion, what was your plan about what to do with this information?"

"We go to the Vermillion redoubt and tell them. We need more people to know." As he said this, I pursed my mouth. I remembered what Chronormu had said, unwilling to give away too much of the future she was trying to ensure would pass. _'You see, Verthelion becomes... somewhat... important later, let's leave it at that._' Important indeed. We had so much influence now. Before as one drake, nobody would have listened to me; it was hard enough with Verthelion, and no doubt if we had tried to convince Pallasion and Murdonia before growing up we would have failed. Now though, three dragons and a drake, we had actual persuasive power; the Old God was smart to try and stop us. I think the mortals called it the snowball effect.

I lifted my tail out of the dirt it had sunk in. When had that happened? Looking up, the growing storm clouds had engulfed half the night sky, alarming to say the least. I tuned back into Verthelion's conversation in the physical realm while playing with a spell in the twilight realm, trying to find out why it wouldn't do what I wanted it to. "If we can get the Red flight to stop attacking ours, we have a chance at persuading the others." When had his goals become so large? When had our plan been anything more than survive? I remembered that what seemed like ages ago, my ultimate plan was to defeat the 'corrupt' Red flight and obliterate the murderous, unstable mortals and bring in a Golden age for Azeroth. How far I'd come; how far _we'd_ come. "But we need to start small, hence, we are headed to the Vermillion Redoubt."

Cauterlion shook his head, the mute dragonspawn making a series of hand gestures that made no sense to me.

The General translated, "Cauterlion says that won't work, that there are incredibly powerful wards around the Redoubt, ones that would incinerate us long before we got within earshot of even the outermost of their patrol drakes. If you want to start small, you'll need another idea." Vajarn grimaced, not liking how he had been revealed to be duped by the Old Gods, but like I had thought, he was smart, and knew when to accept reason over belief. As Verthelion had said, the few dragonspawn left listened to him; no doubt his tactics had saved their lives more than once.

Such a tragedy so many had died. If we hadn't come when we did... "I suggest the 'All In' strategy. When you have a single objective goal that would instantly bring about victory, do not waste time dealing with other less important distractions. We can convince the entirety of the Red flight by going for the 'throat' as it were; Alexstrasza." _Well, I have a very nice plan written out for you. Meeting with the dragonqueen under truce, some well placed flames... _The Old God's words came back to me from when my time as a whelp ended. Was this all in its plan? No. No, it would not work. I knew better now. I would not attack her.

I sighed. "I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm going back and forth all the time; if we are going to Alexstrasza, we will have to go to Wyrmrest, right?" The others nodded. "Then this will be the _fifth_ time I venture to the Arathi Highlands. A _little_ bit redundant, don't you think?"

Verthelion chuckled in his throat. "Yeah, yeah it is. So, we can't get to the Vermillion redoubt? No chance? Not even through the twilight realm?"

Aerliona shook her head. "Not a chance. I tried to do that before; the effects still took hold, and I was lucky to escape with my life. We can not get there."

Verthelion lowered his head and shook it. "So we go to Wyrmrest, do we?" Nods of assent, including from myself. "Perhaps we should rest for the night; sleep is important to."

"It is. Alright, let's get to sleep," Vajarn ordered. Aerliona made herself a little nest of twigs, and Sheralion fell asleep next to Turliona on the ground. Feraliona and Cauterlion each made a structure of mud lined with rocks, looking frighteningly similar to mortal bedding. As the others, save for Verthelion and Pallasion fell asleep, I decided I would too. I didn't need to sleep, and could go a week without before the effects weighed on me, but then I'd need twenty-one hours; with only so few sleepless days, I needed only two hours. I laid down, folding my wings along my back, and rapidly fell asleep beneath the rapidly obscuring skies.

* * *

><p><span>Nalestrasza<span>

I listened to the ever-present, but dimming, hum of Selriona's thoughts with one small part of my vast intelligence, operated her heartbeat with another, and her lungs with yet another, keeping her body in perfect working order all the time, just like I had ever since I became truly self-aware, the rest of her brain, brain stem and all. A less intelligent being would see my twilight self as ungrateful to me for keeping both of us alive, but I know better - of course _I_ know better; she has no knowledge of all that I do. Normally her brain would have done all of it automatically, but now I _am_ the rest of her brain, ever since she was forced to drink that toxin.

_Have you seen the way they look at you? The way they wish to kill you__?_ I stopped the Old God's voices in the hearing section of her brain, and destroyed it before Selriona could process its existence. It had no chance against me, not the way it was going on about it, and the few times it tried to attack me directly, I showed it just _how_ smart I am, just _how _good at arguments one gets from being as intelligent as me. In a battle of wits, I am omnipotent, a deity.

I reached across neurons, sifting through her memories before retracting, feeling her fall asleep, with her mate moving to lean against her. I released the required chemicals and redirected her brain's electric impulses to bring about a dream right away. The sheer amount of thoughts that went through me on a regular basis would be enough to drive anyone else mad within minutes, if not seconds. But I don't go insane.

Because I'm just _brilliant._

I moved part of my focus into the imaginary world I had conjured up through logic and calculation, not personal desire or whims. It was the same place she had fallen asleep; the middle of the Wetlands. The twilight dragon shook her head and stood up, looking at me, perplexed. I knew what she was about to say before she said it.

"Aren't you supposed to be a drake?"

Even knowing it, that was still infuriating. "I'm _supposed_ to be a whelp you moron. Honestly, was that _really_ the first thing that came to your mind?"

She smirked, a feeling of smugness running through her brain. "Actually, the first one was 'Oh hells, not _her_ again'."

I snarled and bared my fangs. "Of course. _Of course_. At any rate, there's a reason I brought you here into the dream."

Her pupils contracted. "You... made me want to fall asleep?"

"Of course not you idiot!" I snapped at her. I pulled myself up, lifting my head higher. "But I did cause the dream to happen right away once you did."

"Let me guess, you wanted to yell at me for saving the dragonspawn? Or maybe for not getting the spell right?"

"No, not that." To be honest, I had no idea how she came up with the spell so fast, and that's saying something. I wasn't good with magic; Selriona was. Oh, sure, I could sift through her memories and see how she did it, but I still wouldn't be able to do it on my own. One of the few things she had over me, but of course I would never admit that to her. "In fact, props on saving them, bit of life that keeps going, every bit counts." However much I am her subconscious, I am still her Red self, still feel obliged to their charge. "Great idea going to Alexstrasza, uh huh. You're on a time limit."

The twilight dragon unsheathed several tusks in the back of her jawline. "WHAT? What do you mean I'm on a time limit?"

I shook my head. Of course, she wouldn't know, being so less intelligent. I knew that, but still... "Of course _you_ wouldn't know. Haven't you noticed the elements growing less stable? The storm that doesn't end? The earth that's starting to become soft in places? It's going to increase exponentially until either A: The world ends or B: Deathwing falls."

Her tusks retracted. "What? But... _WHAT?_"

I rolled my eyes. "Real genius, aren't you? Yes, Deathwing is causing the elements to become restless, and despite the Earthen Ring's best efforts, they will get worse and worse." I didn't have any definitive proof that was the cause, but there were no other explanations, none that made sense. "At the present rate, I'd say we have, oh, about two months before it really picks up. During that time things will get slowly worse, and after that there's roughly a day before the entire Titans-damned world ends." Monitoring her blood flow, I could see it leave Selriona's head even as she slept.

"You're rather calm about this," she spoke in a low, terrified voice. "What, with us having barely more than two months to live."

"I'll be honest, the odds aren't good." Okay, the odds weren't _that_ bad, but if she knew that, she'd grow lax, and then very _bad_ things would happen. "Vajarn mentioned the 'All In' strategy for convincing the Red dragonflight. I'd tell Verthelion that it wouldn't hurt to apply that strategy to the Elemental Instability Event."

"You don't mean - " Observing the stimuli coming into my awareness even as Selriona slept, I decided it was about time to end the dream so she could get rest.

"Yes, I do. Now, get some rest." With that, I destroyed the dream and sent her into deep sleep, but to her it would look like I woke her up.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

When I woke up with a start against Verthelion's scales it was still night time, and not only did the dragonspawn sleep, but so was everyone else. I looked back over the information Nalestrasza had given me amidst her various jabs at my intelligence. Honestly, if she was as smart as she claimed she was, wouldn't she know that anyone would appear unintelligent compared to her?

Two months. We had _two months_ to live! Nalestrasza had said that we needed to use the 'All In' strategy for this, but... but that was madness! That involved _killing_ _Deathw__ing!  
><em>

I groaned and put my head in my claws. Two months. A mere two months until the world ended. I paced back and forth, occasionally tweaking a spell or racking my brains on a particularly difficult, complex one, and still other times drinking from the numerous ponds in the Wetlands.

I didn't like this. The world would end in two months if the Kingslayers didn't kill Deathwing. Surely they knew that? Surely the Earthen ring and the other Dragonflights new that? They had to have a plan. They had to be closing in on Deathwing.

_Two months_.

I didn't notice when Verthelion walked next to me and poked me in the flank with a claw. "AH! Verthe - Don't do that!"

He grinned wickedly. "Sorry. So, what are you doing pacing?"

I felt a shiver start in my crest, run in between my horns, down my spine and to the tip of my tail-club. "Nalestrasza. It's Nalestrasza. She gave me some really bad news."

"What do you mean 'bad news'?"

"Did you notice that storm?"

Verthelion looked up at the overcast night sky, winds howling in the space above the trees. "Of course. What about it?"

"She told me that apparently the elements are getting perturbed. That they're going to get more and more violent until... until..."

"Until what?"

"Until the world ends two months from now, or until Deathwing dies."

We lapsed into silence. "Ha, really funny. The Old God says you're lying."

I shook my head. "No, I'm not. Don't you see the signs? Why would I lie about something like this?"

"You wouldn't. And yes, I see the signs too. This means - oh Titans no, this is bad beyond description. I mean, _two months!_ I'm going to wake up the others. We need to decide what to do with this. We don't have any time to waste." With that, he trampled through the marsh, and I too went to wake up the others, and soon we had formed a circle in the clearing our movements had caused via fallen trees, and Verthelion and I told everyone the situation.

Cauterlion shivered. Pallasion closed his eyes and sunk his head to the ground, and Murdonia curled up into a ball. Vajarn stamped his foot. "Well then, that makes things REALLY simple, doesn't it? Let's start marching to Wyrmrest. That Aspect needs to _die_."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Feraliona cut in. "Are you out of your _mind?_ This is Deathwing we're talking about. He will slaughter us."

"Not if we lend our aid to the Kingslayers," Vajarn pointed out. "I'll bet my wings they'll be coming up with their plan at Wymrest, and they need all the help they can possibly get. This is the fate of the _world_. Deathwing's survival translates to our death, so in a way, Deathwing is going to kill us. We can not just stand by and let him do that, even if he would die anyway. We have to try."

Verthelion nodded in agreement. "You're right. We need to try. Time is of the essence; let's go. I'll open a portal to the twilight realm, you seven go into it." He reared back, twilight energy coursing through his scales. I just stared in disbelief; I could _see_ the way he wove the magic, tiny tendrils appearing and weaving in patterns, but a simple one. Verthelion vanished from the physical realm, leaving a giant portal where he had been, swirling dark blue and pulling in the air around. The others went into the portal, I shifted, and soon enough we were on our way north... again.

Back and forth, back and forth.

The process of flying back across the Thandol span was _miserable_. We faced a headwind, even inside the twilight realm. I shuddered to think of what it would have been like in the physical realm. Eager to find out, I shifted back out slightly, to be greeted with a huge gust to my face, prompting me to retreat. Sheralion and Feraliona lagged behind the others as I flew, but by the time I landed they had caught back up. I thought I saw something ripple on Feraliona's flank, but it turns out it was just the shadowy ripples of the twilight realm playing tricks with my eyes. The sun must've come up by the time we reached the Arathi Highlands, but hidden beneath the cloud cover and lightning strikes, I could hardly tell. We hunted a few of the indigenous species, keeping our strength up. I walked up to Verthelion, who led to march.

"How are we going to get them across the Great Sea? Pallasion is incapable of flying that distance, and the others are incapable of flying at all."

"Well, here's the idea. You're very good at magic, right?" To prove his point, I brought some of my power up into a solid shell of twilight energy around me, before re-absorbing it into my body.

"Obviously."

"Well, I was thinking we could get as far north as we can, then you fly over to the Howling Fjord and open a portal there to here. Unless you can do it now?"

I shook my head. "Not that simple. Teleportation, yeah, but that's a whole other thing. Portals need anchor points." That, I knew from reading the book. "Specific places to go, and I don't know any specific anchor points anywhere that I know how to use. I mean, I know of ones that _exist_, but using them is entirely different." There _was_ that anchor point in Outland that Samuel had used to keep me from getting ground-sick, but I didn't know how to open a portal there, or anywhere, for that matter. Why had there even _been_ an anchor point there? Perhaps someone else enjoyed the scenic view?

"Okay, so why can't you teleport us?"

"Energy. I can't use arcane magic as well, even with my capacitor. I've recently found out that if you take a spell and try to make it target more places or people than it should, like say, a teleport spell, it takes much more energy. I could maybe teleport one of us besides myself, if I could even figure out how to do it in the first place. And going back and forth would leave people stranded as well."

He froze. "The you-know-what said that we should leave some stranded, namely Pallasion."

"We shouldn't. Like Vajarn said, the Kingslayers need all the help that they can get killing Deathwing. And Pallasion would undoubtedly be found by the cult and killed."

He nodded. "Thank you. So, with that said, we go as far north as we can, you fly to the fjord and create a portal while we create an anchor point here, then we go through, problem solved."

"I hardly think it will be _that_ simple."

His eyes flickered briefly. "It won't. If I had to bet, the Old God is going to try to stop us with the cult."

"Undoubtedly," Murdonia said, flying up next to us. We both turned our heads left to look at her. "Why was the mortal Illidan Stormrage so good at killing demons? He fought fire with fire. What are we going to do with Deathwing?" She grimaced, still not entirely happy with the 'Reds aren't corrupt, mortals aren't evil' philosophy. "Fight fire with fire."

"The Kingslayers will be making a plan in Wyrmrest, most likely, with the Aspects. We'll go there, try to not get blown to shreds by the defenders, and help. Like Vajarn said, we can't just sit back and let Deathwing cause our demise," Verthelion answered with finality, officially closing the conversation. He stopped, and faded a little. "What the... oh no." He turned back to the others. "We need to exit the twilight realm. I have a bad feeling about this." The others nodded, Vajarn already weaving together magic - so fascinating, I could _see_ the individual lines of spell runes being created - into a portal. I shifted out, joining Verthelion and Pallasion, followed by the others. The wind blew at my face with vengeance, whipping the grassy plains into frenzied waves and whistling against my ear-plates a chilling melody.

In front of us, a ruin of rusted, twisted metal occupied the road. That had not been there. Jagged spires, original shape impossible to discern, reached to the sky. They twisted along each other, creating a labyrinth of destruction several hundred meters large. The smell of decay overpowered my nostrils, but I was capable of making out one scent above it; fire.

_Deathwing is causing the elements to become restless._

And of course, that would mean fire as well. We stepped carefully into it, Pallasion, Verthelion and I in our mortal forms to not accidentally touch the metal. So much magical power in me! Looking around, I did see a few holes in the larger spires. Like something had been carved out.

Verthelion understood what was happening a split second before I did. "Get down!" He pushed us down, holding out his hands and launching a torrent of twilight fire into the hole to our left. Someone started screaming and flailing before they hit the ground, ablaze in violet fire; the male orc cultist that had been hiding in there. Others came out of the metal spires, surrounding us. I saw an Earth ascendant, the grass wilting into dirt around it, and the soil rising to meet its legs as though it were part of the ground, lava showing out of the cracks where normally veins would be visible.

A trap. We'd walked right into a trap! How could we have been so stupid?

Right away, Vajarn snapped into 'commander mode'. "Casters and dragons in the middle, Murdonia take the air, everyone else form a ring!" With that, everyone did what he said, with not enough room for me to use my true form. We were caught in a channel, two paths leading to us. Sheralion and Turliona blocked one end, Cauterlion and Feraliona the other, with me, Vajarn, Pallasion, Verthelion and Aerliona in the middle and Murdonia taking to the air. Several of the cultists moved closer to attack, but a sheet of flame from Pallasion stopped that attack easily. Unfortunately, on the other end was the ascendant with another few cultists taking up bow and arrows. Remembering the spell, I let it loose, forming the lines of magical instructions rapidly and hurling it at them, feeding a fair bit of power into it. The fireball blew up on them, and the area caught fire, burning dark blue with no fuel.

But of course, before they could be burned significantly, the earth ascendant created a tremor that knocked them away from the area, and another cultist, completely veiled in robes behind them, wove shadow magic into healing them. Amazing, I could actually _see_ it casting the spell, shaping the magic.

I shook my head; _not now!_

Okay, so one of them is healing, and the ascendant is getting closer, with earth spikes blocking everyone's attacks at the cultists.

Fine.

I used the spell I had practiced in the Hinterlands, the one that gave me a lot of trouble, and needed a lot of power. I drew said power from my capacitor, molding the arcane energy into the type I needed. Even so, I needed a lot of my own. I focused the spell on the one that seemed to be injured the most, and as such, received the most healing. A haze surrounded them, the magic capturing the healing magic inside and using it as power, preventing it from having any effect. The power stored grew and grew until it released it all in a devastating shadow nova that punched a crater three meters wide, but did nothing outside. Obliterated the cultists, and the blast caught the ascendant in the back.

Said ascendant roared in pain and turned to me, clenching its fists. I just managed to jump out of the way of a massive column of stone that had impale the space I occupied a moment before. That's when Murdonia came to the rescue. She grabbed the ascendant in her claws and flew up, holding the struggling psuedo-elemental open to a barrage of twilight energy. Within moments it crumbled to iron and gravel with an agonized roar.

"We need to keep moving. This is a large place, there are likely more than a few ambushers," Vajarn commanded. "Feraliona, Sheralion, take the rear. Everyone else, in front. Murdonia, take the air, lead us out." Nobody even bothered to nod. Murdonia steadily led us out of the labyrinth of twisted, rusty metal spires, any cultists who dared to attack us being cut down like wheat.

If the Old God really saw us as a threat, I feel insulted.

Soon enough we had escaped, and we broke 'formation' and the three with illusions released them. We continued our northward march without a word, and soon enough night came. Our watches set up; Sheralion, Cauterlion, me, Vajarn, and Murdonia. I resolved for the hour of sleep I needed and found an outcropping of rock large enough to house me. We had gotten halfway across the Highlands. I closed my eyes, hoping and praying to not meet Nalestrasza _again_.

She only seemed to give bad news.

* * *

><p><span>?<span>

Now was my shift, now was my time. The dragons slept; I'd only have an hour or so before they woke up. Those... those _idiots!_ 'Mortals aren't evil' ha, what a joke. How Selriona could have ever come to that absurd conclusion is _beyond_ me. 'Oh the world's going to end in two months' for the love of the Titans, the world is big enough and old enough to take care of itself! So what if the elementals are having a little tantrum? I made a deal with the Old God; it would let me commune directly with Deathwing. He needed to know of the plans. If we were going to 'help' the wretched Kingslayers, we'd know their plan. They could not be allowed to win. Deathwing's fall translated to our demise, and no amount of 'diplomacy' would ever fix that, not at this point.

I was not worthy. This was an Aspect, sixty thousand plus years old, powerful beyond my comprehension, but the Old God assured me it would be all right, that he would keep the Aspect in check.

I cast the lines of magic out, struggling to find the power within myself. Just when I thought I couldn't do it...

_You dare, little dragonspawn?_ HIS voice boomed inside my head so loud I was afraid the others would hear it, the brainwashed fools.

I instantly dropped on my forelegs. _F-forgive me, but I had to tell you of - _

_Of the rogue twilight dragons. _A shock of pain, searing, agonizing pain shot through my back. _You think you would know ANYTHING of importance I do not? What is your pathetic little plan to end them? I assure you, their assistance to the Lifebinder will be most unfortunate with the twilight realm's control._

_A-a rust potion. I took the rust off some metal spires in a cultist ambush and placed it into a vial. The leader of the four seems to be Verthelion, I'll give it to him!  
><em> I was honestly afraid he was going to blast me to cinders simply through the mental link.

_Good. And since you will likely fail, being a WORTHLESS, INSIGNIFICANT FAILURE OF A DRAGONKIN, I shall have the Twilight Father intercept you when you fail. If you had any sense at all you'd have made enough toxin for them all. _I felt the mental link close with a painful snap. If that was the Aspect of Death with the Old Gods keeping him in check, I really didn't want to speak to him otherwise. Never again, if I could avoid it.

I took the glass vial out from the illusion I weaved around it, letting me hold it in my hands without rising suspicion. Red flakes floated around in the water, giving it the hue of blood. I wouldn't do it yet, not just yet. Wait until we'd gotten far away from anyone. I felt horrible for what I had to do; however misguided they were, they were good people. But this had to be done.

For their own good.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	36. Chapter 36:Confident

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Like always, huge, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

The air was hot and sticky when I woke up in the middle of the night. All the others slept peacefully and silently, save for Feraliona; the bronze senser snored in her sleep. A flash of lightning zipped through the sky, incinerating a distant tree, the crack of thunder briefly drowning out the howling winds and causing the others to stir. I sighed and nuzzled against Verthelion's head, which was right next to me, and stood. I needed to clear my head. And more than that, I needed to practice making an anchor point for the portal I would have to create to Northrend.

I found a spot away from the others, and set to work, weaving the arcane energy through myself, examining how to fix it, how to open a portal to it, all sorts of things. It was incredibly intricate and finely woven, though. Not that there was anything hard about examining, just that it was so complex to create an anchor point in the first place. I had to set the base, have it follow Azeroth through its rotation and revolution (Since portaling there and ending up in the Great Dark Beyond would be... well, bad.), and not to mention set scattering on the off chance more than one portal opened to it at once. That last one I wasn't really worried about, few would know of its existence at all. But even just setting the base was unbelievably complex. I retracted to my mortal form for the additional mana and set to work.

Just as I tweaked the racing, complex commands of a temporary anchor point base, Pallasion woke up. "It won't work," I told him, looking up from my vantage point. "There needs to be more power. And I don't have that much. I must be going about it wrong." I absorbed the arcane form back into my body. "There's got to be a more efficient way to make an anchor point."

"I did not catch any of that," he answered. "What do you mean an 'anchor point'?"

"For the portal I have to make to Northrend. Unless you feel like flying _all_ the way there..."

"NO!" he yelled, flaring out his tusks. Feraliona turned over in her sleep. "I mean, no!"

"Then I have to get this right. Plan is we fly as far north as we can, I create an anchor point, fly over to Northrend, and create a portal there for the rest of you."

Pallasion nodded. "Sounds like a plan. So you're practicing?"

I rolled my eyes. "What does it LOOK like I'm doing? Arcane magic is just so, so hard to use. Twilight energy is trivial."

"Really? Trivial?"

I released my illusion. "Very. And - " I stopped myself, bringing my head close to Pallasion's neck. I narrowed my eyes. There it was, a small, tiny violet string, reflecting light from a nonexistent source. I recognized it.

It was the command for If-then. Barely visible, but it was, in fact there. "Um, Selriona?"

"Shh. I think I see the spell." I traced the line to one of its end points, where it branched into five different commands, separating and dividing countless times to form a web all around Pallasion. I couldn't see it easily, and if I didn't try to look for it, I couldn't see it at all, but it was irrefutably there.

About _time_. The wait was killing me! No, I'm impatient. "That is insane," I whispered. "I don't even know how to begin with this one. Dispelling it will be hard. The cult did not want us dispelling the effect."

"Is that any surprise?" Behind us, Verthelion stirred, one of his eyes opening, then closing right after, but judging by his breathing he was still awake, just too lazy to get up. "Can you see it on him?" I pulled up next to Verthelion, squinting my eyes.

I nodded. "Yeah, I can. I'll try to figure it out, but doing that AND figuring out the anchor point..."

"You'll get it done," Verthelion mumbled in a barely audible voice. "I have faith in you," he said, pulling himself to his feet, shaking the last remnants of sleep out of his head. "Anyway, we should do some hunting while the others are sleeping."

I nodded. "Hold on, just let me set some defenses."

Verthelion extended one of his rear-line tusks, the equivalent of a mortal raised eyebrow. "You can set defenses?"

I shrugged my wings. "Well, not very good ones, but good _enough_. And if you want to wake them up to send them into the twilight realm, be my guest."

He grimaced. "Point taken." He spread his wings. "Think we can find enough to eat in this place? There _is_ the supercell."

Now it was my turn to grimace. "The air elementals. They aren't happy. If what I hear is true, the Kingslayers killed their leader."

Pallasion's head jerked back. "They _killed_ an elemental lord?"

"Evidently. And if their track record is anything to go by, as in, their never-been-defeated-by-anything-in-the-world track record, they've also killed Ragnaros in Hyjal," I theorized.

"So, let's hunt then?" Verthelion suggested.

"Hold on, let me put up some wards. You two can go on ahead though, I'll catch up." With that, Verthelion spread his wings and took off, Pallasion walking.

The hunt didn't go nearly as well as I had hoped. The weather conditions sent most of the prey hiding, the wild winds kept me from getting a good trail via scent, and one of the raptors I DID manage to find was currently in the process of being swallowed by a pit of earth, and by the time I got to it, it had submerged and proceeded to suffocate. I managed to kill a few raptors. But they were hardly enough to sate my hunger. In the end, I had to bring one of my victims back to the camp, shift into a mortal form, build a bonfire, and cook it. I didn't know much about cooking, but how hard could it be?

The meat turned crispy and brown by the time I was through with it, but the insides still pink. I didn't need _nearly_ as much food in this form, and anything I ate would enlarge itself when I shapeshifted; I could eat a mortal's fill and still spend almost the whole day in my true form.

I looked up at the two males as they returned to the camp with bloodstained fangs. Pallasion looked down at me. "Selriona... what exactly are you doing?"

I took another bite from the flesh, severing filaments of fried muscle. "Eating. Not enough raptor to go around." I swallowed.

The two exchanged looks before Verthelion cocked his head sideways. "Really? I feel like there was enough."

I scoffed. "You two left before I did. Probably - " I stopped myself before I could go on; no sense giving the Old God more ammunition. "Nevermind." I swallowed the last bit of meat and continued to examine the lines of magic forming the communication spell on myself. I plucked at a few of the rune/commands, but to no avail, and returned to my true form, stretching my wings out to their full length. For the next few hours, we spoke of various things, occasionally off-setting the Old God's whispers. We told Pallasion about how to never ever EVER go on a boat if he could avoid it, and he told us about what it was like living in Seradane with Murdonia. Finally, the others woke up. After eating out of the raptor's carcass I had brought, we continued our march north-west, towards the Hillsbrand Foothills amidst the rolling thunder and the occasional flurry of lightning on the horizon that lit up the sky to the extend I almost thought there were no heavy, oppressive clouds. I looked straight up.

"I bet I could see how far they go," I said next to Turliona. She looked up at me, blue eyes squinting.

"How far what does?"

"The clouds. I bet I could do that."

She shook her head. "You're crazy. You will get electrocuted the moment you touch them."

"I can protect myself. I know how."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive," I confirmed. Crouching down, I took off and neared the clouds.

The ominous, rolling clouds quickly revealed their texture as I closed in. I had seen lots of clouds from up close before, but none like _this_. Swirls of dark fog wafted violently, churning wisps below a mass of dark gray illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning. The winds picked up rapidly as I approached, updrafts and downdrafts trying to rip my wings from my body. I drew from my power, creating a shimmering sphere of twilight energy around myself, and the wind shear ceased. I flew upward, flashes of lightning striking my barrier and arcing along it in spider webs, but I kept ascending, feeling the bite of cold as less air existed around me to heat myself, but the effects were negligible. I don't know how far I went, but I did have to feed more power into my barrier to keep it from collapsing under the lightning bolts and through a blast of powerful wind that usually capped most other thunderclouds, but eventually I broke cloud, the shell keeping the air pressure from getting to me.

My jaw dropped.

The white fuzzy ice-clouds of the thunderstorm touched my claws, and extended in a near even sheet for kilometers. The Foothills had to have been completely engulfed, and looking the other way I simply could not see where it ended.

"Damn," I whispered to no-one in particular. I let myself drop back through the clouds, punching a hole in the clouds that sealed behind me in seconds as wind and lightning battered uselessly against my barrier. I fell through the clouds, catching sight of the others a good half a kilometer in front of me.

I set back down next to Verthelion. "Turliona told me where you went," said Verthelion. "How bad is it?"

"To the south, I don't even know how far the clouds go, and to the north-west, at least the entirety of Hillsbrand is under the weather, and its _all _stormcloud."

"In other words, bad. Well, Nalestrasza _did_ say it would be getting worse."

"Yeah. I wonder how bad it is around the world."

"Only one way to find out, and we're a little preoccupied with going to Wyrmrest pronto."

I chuckled. "Yeah, we are. So, any idea on how we're going to get even close to Wyrmrest without getting blasted to smithereens?"

He shook his head. "I'm all tapped out of ideas. To be honest, I've been hoping Vajarn would handle that."

A smile crept to my fangs. "Well then, lets keep going. When we stop for the night, we can ask him if he has any clue."

He gently nudged my head with his horns. "Yes, let's keep going. We've got a lot of distance to cover."

* * *

><p>We spent the night within the Hillsbrand foothills. The imposing wall had been shattered, and parts of it sunken into the ground, visibly sinking into the ground as the earth elementals became impatient. Our shelter consisted of little more than trees and branches stitched together as a roof for the dragonspawn, and I kept myself in the twilight realm, save for the faded outline of my illusion in the physical realm. Currently, Cauterlion and Aerliona were teaching me his hand signals.<p>

"That's 'R'," she responded. Cauterlion made another signal. "And that's 'you'."

"Me, or the word you?"

"The sound. Okay, try and understand this." Cauterlion made another series of hand signals, but much slower than he did to his companions. I had the sensation of someone suddenly grasping a joke, or finding the solution to a difficult math problem, as suddenly the nonsensical motions made an impact to my brain.

"Um... I am going slowly for you?" Cauterlion signed 'Yes'. That was a little insulting, but it made sense. A roll of thunder went through the sky.

"Okay, try this," Aerliona suggested. A few seconds of hand motions later, I thought I had it.

"Um... I hope the sentries at Wyrmrest do not kill us?" He nodded, before signing some more. "Now let's go to sleep," I answered to be awarded with another nod. "You do that, I'm going to keep working on the anchor point and dispelling." They walked off to their places; Aerliona to her nest and Cauterlion to another 'bed' of mud and rock. I continued fiddling the the lines of magic on myself, trying to figure out in what order I had to pluck at the strings to unravel the whole knotted business. The process required a pitiful amount of my mana, and after an hour of trying, I didn't notice even the slightest of dents in my mana pool from my own attempts. Several times I thought I had something, and the spell began to unravel, only for it to hit a defense mechanism and reconstitute itself, using my OWN power to do so, and said defense mechanisms seemed impossible to breach.

Clever. Any failed attempts at dispelling this would drain my own mana, making it impossible to go at it for long. If I did keep going, the spell would drain my own body fluids to keep itself intact, eventually killing me. Maybe I could ask Nalestrasza for help. She'd make some snarky comment, but two heads were better than one, especially when that second head is a self-proclaimed genius.

* * *

><p>In my dream, I was in a blank white space all around me, so it looked like I floated, but my claws clicked on solid ground as I walked forward. Soon enough, Nalestrasza appeared beside me.<p>

"I need - "

"Help, I know. The Old God spell." A twilight dragon female appeared in front of myself. It was me, but stood like a statue, not breathing or doing anything. I saw vibrant lines of magic around the doppelganger, far brighter than in the real world. My red self grimaced. "I had hoped not to have to tell you this, but I can't do much in the way of helping with this."

"What do you mean you can't help?"

"_I'm_ not good with spells, you are. It's practically the only thing you have over me," she grumbled. "But this is important, so I'm willing to try. That's an exact duplicate of the spell. It will behave the same way. Have at it."

I approached the duplicate of myself, and started to examine it closely, plucking at what I thought to work, trying to find some way around the defense mechanisms, but there didn't seem to be any. Nalestrasza and I bounced ideas off each other, and for once she didn't insult my intelligence, since I actually knew more about something than her, and I'll be damned if I didn't feel extremely proud of myself. Slowly, though, my time ended and I woke up, but I had made progress; I knew that I needed to find some way of counteracting the defense mechanisms. In theory, if I plucked several strands at the same time and caused it to unravel in several places at once, it could be too much for said mechanisms, but I had to figure out how to cause the appropriate resonance...

I shook myself out of those thoughts, and searched for something to drink, some river. Pallasion and Verthelion weren't present, having woken up earlier, and the shimmer of wards around the 'camp' meant they had taken precautions. By the time I had completed the round trip to the nearest river and back, the sun's rays made themselves known by the lighter patch of clouds on the horizon, and Pallasion, Murdonia and Verthelion stood next to the others as they got ready to move. My mate looked up as I descended. "There you are. _It_ told me you'd abandoned me."

I shook my head. "I went to the river to drink. We're going to keep going then, I'm guessing?"

It was Vajarn that nodded. "Yes, we are. Come on, let's keep going." The winged dragonspawn set out north-west, stopping once to pull his foot out of a patch of softened ground. Soon enough, Verthelion took the lead, and I fell back with Vajarn.

"Do you have any plan on how we're going to get to Wyrmrest?" I asked.

He craned his neck up to look me in the eye, smiling. "Well, first we have to get through Hillsbrand, and - "

"Not that way, I mean how aren't we going to get blown apart by the defenses!"

"Oh, I know that." Vajarn continued to smile. I growled irately. "Here's the idea. The Red dragonflight is, if nothing else, honorable. When fighting a mortal who is not despicable, they'll give up their advantage of flight to fight on fair terms. I'm going to fashion a flag of truce, and we'll approach using that. They won't attack us if they see that."

"How do you know that the Reds are honorable?"

"I've seen them fight before, let's leave it at that." Right, he and those who followed him had nearly been eradicated by the Red dragonflight. "So I'm crafting a flag of truce when we get there, in addition to a little surprise." He grinned.

"What surprise?"

"You'll see. You'll see." I decided not to press the issue, he probably wouldn't tell me. "How's the spell coming along?"

I shook my head. "Difficult. It's hard enough to get it to start to unravel, but then there's these defense mechanisms, and whenever the unraveling gets to those it drains my own mana and regenerates the spell. I have an idea, but I don't know how to start it. I need to think."

"Not that one, the one for opening a portal to Northrend."

I deadpanned. Did everyone know? I hadn't told him. "Oh, that one, that one's coming along nicely. I've figured out the anchor, now I just need to get there, go to Northrend, and attune a portal to said anchor point. So that's pretty much set."

Vajarn grinned hearing the good news. "Then things are starting to look up."

* * *

><p><span>General Vajarn<span>

This was all very troubling. I continued my trek forward, my squad of five loyally following me. The information given to us by Verthelion, Pallasion, Selriona and Murdonia had completely shattered my world, and as tempting as it was to deny it, I could not turn away from the facts presented to me. I was a person of logic, and when presented with irrefutable logic, would always change my views, regardless of how painful it may be. Never have I had to change a view as basic as this, so fundamental to my world up until that point. But it all made sense. The Red flight's charge wasn't to prevent death, as such was not technically synonymous with protecting life as I had previously thought. Those I commanded would follow me; they always had before, always trusted in my tactics to ambush the mortals and get away unscathed, even if now said actions were revealed to be evil.

In retrospect, how had I not seen this coming sooner? The Twilight's Hammer literally wanted the world to end, which was why they followed Deathwing. Yet it had never occurred to me that this would mean Deathwing wishes to end all life, including ours, including my own.

_You will be alone in the end._

I shrugged off the voice of the Old God, not giving it the satisfaction of a response. I had a new purpose; do anything I could to ensure the downfall of Deathwing, preferably _before_ the world ended. Currently we were essentially escorting Selriona north; she was the one who'd make us a portal. It was unnerving how Verthelion had essentially seized control of the entire situation, even over me, and it was perfectly normal for dragons to command spawn. But I had other problems, mainly trying to reach Wyrmrest at the quickest pace possible, feeding some of my magic into accelerating our movement. I couldn't give us all the acceleration spell Aerliona had, but I could do as much as I could. Speaking of which...

I drew up to her. "Aerliona."

She whipped around at me and straightened out. "Yes?"

"Go ahead of us and scout out the area, let me know of any mortal and dragon movements, particularly the Twilight's Hammer. Use our link to come back at nightfall."

She nodded, rubbing the small burn on her back where I had created a link between us, between all my scouts, so she could always find her way back, a vital skill for a scout. _She hesitates, she strives to rebel against you, kill you._ "Right away. Give me a moment..." She placed her clawed hands together for a moment before twilight fire erupted along them, and then she zipped away at impossible speeds, leaving a trail of dust in her wake and the dragons looking on in stunned surprise, before hesitantly continuing. I nodded in approval. Aerliona was the only one of my scouts remaining, but she wasn't the best that I had ever had. Still, she was fast, and she had a good head on her shoulders. She knew what was important to remember, what paths to take to facilitate movement, how to hunt on the fly. For the time being, we continued to march at a good, rapid pace. We'd reach the Dalaran crater by nightfall if the winds at our back continued as such.

As it turns out, there were still surprises to be released, obstacles to overcome. The sun had begun its descent behind the veil of clouds, and we had to stop once to pull Turliona out of an earth pit amidst the strikes of lightning off in the distance. The ruins of the mortal town of Southshore passed far, far to our left, kilometers, but even so the stench of plague covered every stone, every blade of grass, and every one of my scales.

I currently had a debate with Sheralion about the properties of the pillars of stone we had found in Deepholme, which were comprised not of one solid block, but of several hundred metallic cubes which occasionally separated from each other as though they exploded, before collapsing back together one by one, only to repeat the cycle.I had used those in ambushes, attacking and then withdrawing just in time for the cubes to explode out, positioning with such precision that our foes would be struck in the head, but we would be left untouched. It was those stones that compromised Feraliona's sword; they were impossible to bend through normal flame, but luckily I had the power to shape them as I saw fit. It was surprisingly deadly for a weapon of its dullness; its blade couldn't have been less than 2 millimeters thick yet it cut through solid steel, elementium with enough force.

"And I'm telling you, there had to have been something inside the pillar. Some magical core or something that moved them, no way all those hundreds moved of their own power," Sheralion argued, not meeting my eyes.

"Deepholme is a place of sentient earth, I do not find it hard to believe those stones moved themselves in their formations."

"Precise to the second and the centimeter? I find it hard to believe something sentient could do that." He stepped over a protruding stone in the ground.

I considered that. "You have a point. But then, if you only do one thing, every single time, again and again for all eternity, you're probably going to be good at it."

"Well, no real way to know for sure, is there?" He still didn't look at me.

I shook my head, chuckling. "No, there isn't." The thunder rolled through the sky again, but continued this time.

Selriona froze. "What the - " She looked up at the clouds, slowly reddening until the skies looked like they had been drenched in blood. What was going on? "Oh no, oh no! This is bad."

Her mate looked at her nervously. "What's wrong?"

"It's him, it's - "

A horrible, grinding, powerful voice exploded through the air, pounding against my mind with waves of malice and spite so intense as to be practically tangible. "The sun has set on this mortal world, fools." I looked up at the source of the noise, a black shape within the red clouds, gargantuan wings flapping, clearing away the storm to reveal -

Oh no.

"Make peace with your end, traitors, for the Hour of Twilight falls!" Deathwing swooped down, a torrent of heavy, oily flames spewing from his maw.

Selriona extended her wings, and I felt the familiar 'sinking into a lake' sensation that meant she was drawing us into the twilight realm. The air around Deathwing glowed orange and I could see tongues of flame radiating from his body in all directions, like he was surrounded by a halo. Even from such a distance, kilometers away, I felt the scorching heat seeping under my scales. Violet haze began to creep in the side of my vision as he neared, and then I noticed something. A small crack on Deathwing's armor, his stomach, where some of the plates had slightly peeled apart to reveal a mass of orange below, with some black specks floating on it...

I fired a blast of twilight flame up at the crack, hoping to catch the scales aflame. The last thing I saw of the physical realm was my blast deflecting across a black and red shell of magic, releasing a colossal explosion of shadowflame in all directions as the shield retaliated.

Entering the twilight realm always gave me a surge of energy, a feeling not unlike that of waking up after a long, restful sleep. Shadows and mist curled around me, fusing my muscles with extra strength and my magic with more potency. Looking up, I saw a giant black wyrm, far larger than the dragons I was with, flying through the same space as Deathwing had, leaving a thick, heavy violet mist streaming behind him, going back kilometers, with a bright violet aura around him, in addition to five circular black 'chains' circling each of his legs and the base of his tail club, each also glowing violet. He flew off into the distance, and vanished from sight, leaving a massive track of violet haze in the air and another violet haze on the ground, impossibly wide.

Verthelion shuddered, Sheralion and Turliona had huddled together clasping each other, and Murdonia had hidden under Pallasion's wings. Pallasion spoke first. "How didn't I sense him? I should have sensed him!" He smacked the club of his tail against the ground irately, the extra strength from the twilight realm causing the dirt and stone to crack.

"What I want to know is what that black wyrm was in the twilight realm," Verthelion said. "It shouldn't even have existed in the twilight realm. He was the size of an Aspect, but there's no way that it can be _Neltharion_, can it?"

Wait.

Neltharion?

Selriona let out a 'Hmm'. "I don't know. Do you think, you know, _he'll_ come back for us?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so, he's far too busy destroying the world, probably doesn't see us as such a threat as to warrant stopping that. Good thing you were here to pull us into the twilight realm. Is it safe outside?"

Pallasion shook his head. "Not yet, there's still some fire left. Going down, though. I'm guessing we have maybe a minute until we can go back out."

Said minute passed in silence until Pallasion spoke up again. "Alright, good to go." With that, I felt myself 'lifting' out of the twilight realm, my extra strength being left behind.

When I saw what had happened to the physical realm, my heart skipped a beat.

I had seen destruction before, when the cult had wiped clean an entire camp in Deepholme, burning everything to the ground, or when the mortal defenders attacked in kind. But nothing could compare with this. The grass had been scoured from the earth, the trees reduced to cinders and ashes which the wind already blew away into the wind. The dirt had been incinerated so that even though it was not sand, it had glassed over in several places. Flames still licked the ground every now and then, thick molten flames who's light made me shield my eyes and the roar of which drowned out the near-perpetual thunder. A kilometer wide stretch of destruction, blackened earth, glassed in some places, flames dimming.

I heard Selriona whisper, "He HAS gotten stronger. The destruction wasn't nearly this bad last time I saw him pass. Titans, how many did he kill just now?"

My mind lurched to a conclusion. "Oh no. Aerliona... she can't enter the twilight realm as fast. She wouldn't have been able to hide." The link with my scouts was one way; they could tell where I was, but not the other way around. I'd never needed it to be otherwise.

Cauterlion lurched, and began signing. 'What? No, she can't be dead! She's resourceful, she'd have escaped!'

Selriona sighed. When had she learned how to understand him? I answered him. "We can't be sure. I told her to meet back up with us at night. Until then, we can't know for certain.

'Even then we can't!' he continued to sign. 'She might be incapacitated, delayed, anything!'

"Cauterlion, nobody short of an Aspect could have survived that attack. Aerliona had no chance."

'If she was in the blast! She could've avoided it!' Cauterlion's signing sped up as his fangs gritted. Sheralion stepped up to him.

"Look my friend, whether or not she's dead, we have to keep going forward to Wyrmrest."

With that, Cauterlion relented, nodding. 'Alright. Let's keep going.'

But when had we ever done anything else? That's all we ever did, keep going, keep going, all the time. Down in Deepholme we always had to move to shake enemies off our tails, then when it became clear our flight was going to be wiped out if we didn't run and hide, we had to make a mad dash for the Pillar of Earth, sneak through a destabilizing escape portal while the battle still went on to appear in the Titans-damned Swamp of Sorrows, then run towards the Hillsbrand Foothills. I had assumed that once we arrived there, we'd be safe; we'd arrived there, and we still were not safe. All we ever did was keep going. I had only ten percent of my troops left, eight percent if Aerliona truly was dead. I prided myself on my tactical intellect, my ability to wiggle out of anything with minimal casualties, but some things there was no getting out of, some things were simply not mathematically possible to accomplish. Defeating Deathwing seemed to be more and more of one. Just one strafing run, and this happens, and we are forced to retreat, and he likely hadn't put any effort behind it.

But I saw the instability of the world. It was escalating if what Selriona said was true.

_They lie about it all_.

Which just further proved my point. Old Gods were beings of pure spite, malice and evil. If it did not want me doing this, then I was doing the right thing, unless it decided to use reverse psychology, but that didn't seem like a real danger. The odds were astronomical, but we'd die if we failed. We had to try, to keep going, in the hopes that eventually we might not have to.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

Aerliona didn't return, much to Cauterlion's despair. He was silent - even more so than usual - as we set up around the crater Dalaran had been. The ground had blackened due to Deathwing's strafe, but even so violet runes glowed faintly on the ground surrounding the crater, a faint shell of arcane energy surrounding it, and pushing a claw into it, I still felt a small bit of resistance. The lake to the north was simply massive, stretching in all directions, the occasional flash of lightning giving it a silver sheen in the absence of the moons. In the twilight realm, I laid on my stomach, my capacitor around my neck like always, Verthelion standing off to the side, no doubt thinking. In the physical realm, I sat straight up, watching over the sleeping dragonkin since it was, after all, my watch.

Aerliona hadn't returned. Another death. Another window of opportunity closed, and another few connections severed, friends left with a hole in their beings, Cauterlion in particular. He hadn't signed anything since she'd vanished. I had almost cracked the Old God communication spell, I knew it. I could pluck several strings in the spell at once, unfurling it in several directions at once, forcing several defense mechanisms to activate. They interfered with each other, and so had to draw on more of my power, and as such I only had three attempts before I decided to leave it, take a drink, and then sat down for my watch. I just needed to find a way to get around them; they resonated and made it harder to regenerate the spell when multiple were draining me at once.

In both realms, my claws clenched the scoured, sterilized stone, but in the twilight realm the stone was inundated in a choking purple fog, as was the sky above me where Deathwing had undoubtedly passed. I hadn't seen that fog the first time Deathwing had strafed in my area, likely because I was too young to see the corruption at that point. Or maybe because I hadn't been in the twilight realm enough times.

Then there was that chained black wyrm in the twilight realm. It made no sense. Verthelion said it might be Neltharion, but, but, that was impossible! Even if the Aspect of Earth and Death were separate entities, how would he be in the twilight realm?

But then - NO! Stop this maddening chain of thought _this instant!_

Another flash of lightning illuminated both realms, before the thunder reached me ten seconds later, a dull sound like a roar. Things were... looking up. At this rate, we'd reach Wyrmrest quickly, I was on the brink of finding out how to free the others from the Old God's whispers, Vajarn had a plan to keep the Reds from charring us, and no doubt Verthelion was either coming up with or already had a method of explanation for them. We played on a delicate balance, and things could go wrong so easily, as Deathwing just demonstrated. But we had so much going for us.

How could we lose? Who could ruin this, short of an Aspect?

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	37. Chapter 37:Worried

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard entertainment does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing. Get well soon!**

* * *

><p>"This isn't funny, Selriona! Let - me - go!" Pallasion growled.<p>

I just rolled on the ground laughing my tail off, desperately trying to be as quietly as I could to keep the others from waking up. From atop a slight hill Verthelion laid on his stomach, front paws outstretched and head raised, watching us with a curious air. "It's, it's, it's hilarious!" I tried so, so hard to keep my laughter to a minimum, while Pallasion simply growled menacingly from his place on the ground, wings pinned to his side and stomach to the ground, completely ensnared by the twilight prison that I had created under him while he walked around. The violet runes had exploded underneath him, sensing the pressure, and promptly rendered him even more helpless than a whelpling. Maybe if he'd been expecting it he would have defeated the effect, but as it was, he wasn't, and he didn't.

"Cut it out! Just let me out! Whatever point you're trying to make - "

"Nope, no point!" I raised myself on my forelegs, only to collapse laughing again. Oh Titans, air, I needed air! Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Verthelion struggling to suppress a smile. Oh, I enjoyed this too much.

"Sooner or later you have to let me out."

"Oh, I know." I pulled up next to him, making sure to rub in the fact that I could stand and walk whereas all he could do was speak, completely at my mercy. "But why not enjoy it as long as possible?" I placed my head to the earth, looking him in the eyes, smiling while he growled, baring his fangs. I stood back up, looking at him struggle. He'd pull to the side, but the trap's power would grow until he snapped back, like a spring pulled out longer and longer. "This is too comical. I should do this more often..."

"Don't you dare!"

"Oh take a joke, Pallasion," said Verthelion, rising from his perch and walking down to us. "Though you have to admit," A smile peeked through his fangs. "This is pretty amusing."

Pallasion whined. "What have I done to deserve this?" He made another futile effort at escaping, then settled for growling in my direction. Hahaha, oh, when I let him go I was so dead. I heard Murdonia moving, and she landed next to us, looking at the two twilight dragons holding her future mate captive.

She looked at me with sleepy eyes, then at Pallasion, then Verthelion, then back at me, and then sighed. "Do I want to know?" We provided no answer. One wasn't needed. She turned to Pallasion. "You just walked right into that, didn't you?"

He growled. "Shut up."

She raised her right front leg and licked a spot of dirt off the scales, before lowering it and cocking her head sideways. "Is it wrong that I'm enjoying this?"

"Oh, not you too!"

"I mean, I know it must be uncomfortable, and those runes are probably powerful, but still, the great master fighter Pallasion, brought to his knees by some lines on the _grass!_" Towards the end of that sentence her voice cracked with amusement, forgetting her lethargy from waking up recently.

Pallasion's glare made it look like he tried to fire shadow beams out of his eyes. "Oh yeah, sure, let's all have a _good long look_. Let's a-a-a-a-all laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha." He tried to raise himself on his forelegs, but as always, didn't manage to get a few meters up before the prison forced him back. "This isn't funny! It's sadistic, cruel, indragon, and, and _for the love of the Titans stop laughing!_"

Coming down from the hyena-styled laughter, I managed to feel some scrap of sympathy for him. "Alright, I'd better let him go, shouldn't I?"

Verthelion considered this for a moment amidst my captive's repetitive 'Yesyesyesyesyesyes!' "I think he's suffered enough."

"Exactly how long has he been like that?" asked Verthelion's sister.

"Hmm, let's see. About four hours," I answered. I stepped closer to the twilight prison and plucked at a single line of power within it, causing the entire thing to unfurl within moments, freeing Pallasion.

Before I could blink, I was on my back, pinned by a very, very angry first-born with all six jaw tusks out, his claws digging into my exposed stomach, his growling drowning out the near-constant thunder in the distance. Out of reflex, I released an explosion of twilight energy, sending him flying off with an 'Oof!'. I really shouldn't fight him, I _do_ deserve this. Luckily, he saved me the choice and in a flash righted himself, dodged a blast from me and plowed into my side, forcing me to the ground and keeping one paw over my head, carefully positioning so I couldn't stab him with my tusks. A shell of energy surrounded him, so that any blast I released would deflect around it. I could try to dispel it, forcibly pluck one of the strands in it and cause the entire mechanism to unfurl, but that wouldn't get me anywhere, not against him while he had me pinned.

After clawing up my stomach sufficiently to a stunned Verthelion and Murdonia, Pallasion got off of me and I stood, slowly as not to open the injuries any more, and then proceeded to sink into the twilight realm and siphon some of the shadows there to use in healing my form. Interestingly enough, both versions of myself were injured in equal places. Soon enough, the cuts had faded to scars, some of my violet blood staining the blackened earth.

Looking at the sky, I saw that the storm clouds brightened, signifying the day had started and that the dragonspawn would soon be awake. Soon enough, we were underway, once again trekking through the earth northward, around the enormous, churning lake. Verthelion, like always, took the lead, with Vajarn next to him, followed by Pallasion and Murdonia, then the dragonspawn. I fell back to Turliona.

"Hello," I told her.

She looked up at me curiously. "Hello?"

"So, what was Deepholme like? I've heard stories, but what did you think of it?"

"Well, picture a vast cave stretching farther than the eye can see in all directions. Now picture half of the earth in it moving around and trying to kill you. That's pretty much what Deepholme was like, Therazane did _not_ want us there, for certain."

"I can picture that."

"Yeah, it's where Feraliona got her sword. It was an experiment by General Vajarn. One of the types of crystals we used as cover, he took a chunk off of, and forged it using twilight fire. The sword's not too sharp, but it cuts through things like you would not believe."

"Does it now?"

She nodded. "Oh yes. Can't imagine how deadly if it would be if it were properly sharpened." The winds abruptly turned against us, slowing our progress. "Damn it!" Far to the left, another tornado plowed across the ground, churning up dirt with a horrible roaring sound audible even from my distance. Taking a step forward, my paw sunk into the ground like it were water before I pulled it out.

"Watch it, sinkhole right there."

Turliona nodded. "Thanks." We continued on. "So, you figured it out first? How the Old God tricked us?"

I nodded. "Yes. A red wyrm blasted me out of the sky and I nearly starved to death since I was placed into a position where I couldn't move. You can do a lot of thinking while waiting to die."

Turliona grimaced. "That must've been fun."

"Oh believe me, it wasn't. So how did you get placed under General Vajarn?"

"Well, after I left the care of my brood-watcher, I was given a skills test, and based on what I could do and what General Vajarn was looking for, I was accepted."

"What _could_ you do?"

Quick as a flash, Turliona took out a small purple-hilted knife from her robes and hurled it at a point on the ground. Looking closely, I saw that she had winged a mosquito.

"Okay, I will admit it. That is terrifying."

Turliona smiled proudly, having been praised by a dragon. "Thank you. That's what I excel at, throwing things. I can just sort of _see_ the trajectory. Well, not actually see it, but I can feel it." She pulled out the knife and held it in her hands again. "I imagine what I want it to hit, and I move myself practically by instinct, like someone else were moving me."

"And Vajarn needed someone with your skills?"

"Indeed he did. And the way he had me use it, simply terrifying. Not just knives; smoke bombs, too, among other things. He even had me hurl knives into the eyes of earth elementals so hard they stuck. Let me tell you. Blind elementals? Funniest things you will ever see." The smile on her fangs was contagious. "They wander around aimlessly, punching the loudest thing they can reach, which usually happens to be other rumbling earth elementals, and when they try to pull out they knives with their big hands they just end up _crushing_ them in deeper!"

"I wish I could've seen that. It sounds amazing."

"It is," she said with mirth and wistfulness, stepping over a log, which I simply crushed underpaw after her, fading halfway into the twilight realm to crack my neck in there, feeling the pressure release in both realms. My twilight self lagged behind my physical self increasingly, while Turliona continued to speak. "Anyways, so that's my story. I got into General Vajarn's unit, he led us on successful ambush after victorious hit-and-run until we decided to hide, we got here, found you, that's pretty much it, you're up to speed."

As I let my twilight self lag behind unaware of what would happen, I felt a growing pressure on both selves as the separation continued to increase, increasing rapidly until they point where it became painful, and then I forced my two selves closer together, before continuing on in the physical realm as if nothing happened. The dragonspawn I walked with, however, noticed. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine, just separated myself in the twilight realm too much. I'm fine now."

She raised an eye ridge, but said nothing, leaving me to my musings. In the twilight realm I practiced with several other spells, including a magical amplification boon that came with a slight price, among other things, such as dispelling the Old God communication spell from myself.

After all, the only test subject you can really, truly count on is yourself.

Eventually, we left the land broken by the Destroyer behind as we turned northward across the mountains, heading into Silverpine forest, hunting and drinking from the lake as we needed. The trees shone with a sheen that gave the region its name, looking at times like a sea of silver amidst the storm clouds. The sun began to set, and soon enough we were forced to stop, the headwind delaying our progress a lot more than Verthelion would have liked (He made _that_ very clear.) We didn't have time for delays. Less than two months until the end of the entire damn world. We set down below the trees, we dragons having to fell a few to get a decent sized clearing. Murdonia slept under the veil of Pallasion's wings, and together with Verthelion and I, we formed a 3-ring guard around the sleeping dragonspawn in the middle.

I'd almost cracked the spell. Just another two days, maybe even not that much, and I'd be able to free my mate from the maddening whispers.

* * *

><p><span>Feraliona<span>

I couldn't sleep. It was time.

The past few days, it had been like the world was in a fog, and not just because of the storm. I couldn't think clearly for some odd reason. Any time I tried to zero in on it the memory just got farther away, and all I could get was a glimpse of twilight scales. I pulled out a vial from my robes. When had I gotten it? I couldn't remember. I do know that I felt that I needed to go through with this. There was a reason I shouldn't, but I couldn't quite grasp it. The others were all in their respective positions for sleeping, Turliona and Sheralion slept next to each other and Cauterlion dreamt in his bed of mud. I raised myself out of my own and examined the vial I had hidden in a pocket, using magic similar to that used in mortal forms to warp my robes into a container with no opening.

It was a simple glass vial, barely larger than my head, the base itself no bigger than my hand. Inside swirled a thick stew of water and rust, giving it that same reddish color the skies had turned when Deathwing passed, being almost more rust than water. Maybe it was. If rust entered a dragonkin, if _sufficient_ rust entered their bloodstream, then it would do something to their blood, slowly reducing their ability to extract oxygen from the air, making them shorter and shorter of breath until they weren't even able to take in enough oxygen to avoid suffocation. It wasn't fast, however. It could take a while for the effects to truly become significant, but that was why I had to do it now. Verthelion, my target - Why was I doing this? I tried to locate the reason, but through the veil over my mind could only discern that _they are good people, but this has to be done for their own good_.

Good enough reason as any. Where was I? Oh yes. Verthelion, my target, would be too far from any form of help against rust poisoning, which only nature magic could cure. I walked over to the sleeping dragon, eyes closed, wings rising and falling in a steady rhythm as he breathed. I took out my sword, the metallic bronze glinting in the light. I ran a claw along the dull edge, but in spite of that, I felt it cut into my natural weapon as though the claw was air. I needed the rust to enter his blood stream directly. Tricking him into ingesting it wouldn't work, the stomach acid would break down the rust, and even if it didn't his body would reject it, _violently_.

It was tricky. I needed to cut Verthelion and pour the concoction into him, without waking him up. Which would be a problem, since being injured while asleep could typically wake you up. I settled for slowly cutting, using some of my magic to calm him as he reacted, a spell similar to the soothing spell mortal priests uses.

I hope he's a deep sleeper.

I walked over to his right front leg, and pointed the tip of my sword at it, cutting a small incision. I had very little time; they only needed a mere hour of sleep. I'd have to hurry, but at the same time be cautious so as not to wake him up.

The moment my sword entered, Verthelion grumbled a bit in his sleep, making me tense. Every one of my senses were on high alert, as high as they could be through the haze on my mind. Blood pounded in my ears as I slowly moved the sword left, leaving a three centimeter cut oozing violet blood. That wouldn't do. I needed it to be wider. I moved the point perpendicular, slowly, freezing at even the slightest movement or noise given off by the adult. Slowly, I had created a small flap of scaled skin that I pulled open lightly. I heard something move, and snapped around. Nothing. Just the wind in the trees beyond the clearing. Right?

I took out the vial and opened it, shuddering at the sight of the rust. Verthelion must've smelled it in his sleep, because he snorted, a gust of air flying out of his nostrils.

"Shh, easy," I whispered, casting the soothing spell. "I'm sorry." I opened the flap of skin, exposing the sheet of twilight blood beneath, and slowly began to empty the contents of the rust potion in, placing in a few drops, then waiting for it to fade from view as his body absorbed it.

Drip, drip, drip, wait.

Drip, drip, drip, wait.

Drip, drip...

As the vial became only a quarter empty, I began to wonder how long it had been. My internal clock told me it was a mere fifteen minutes since I had begun. Was adrenaline really slowing time by that much? I reflected on what I was doing. This was an assassination, for all intents and purposes. Some part of me told me that I was supposed to be following Verthelion's plan, but I shrugged it off. I did what I had too. No exceptions.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Once the vial reached the halfway point, I knew that his fate was sealed. The rust in his body, in these concentrations, would give him rust poisoning. It would take years for it to develop in these tiny amounts, but it would. I still needed more, though. _What are you doing you're poisoning him!_ The thought entered my mind briefly, but the haze over my mind pushed it away before I could think about it too much. Just a little more. Just a little more...

Once thirty-five minutes passed, there was only a quarter of the lethal concoction left. So focused I was on monitoring Verthelion's reactions, stopping and continuing accordingly, I didn't notice the dragon behind me awaken. Or rather, I did notice, but I was so absorbed in my task it simply did not register. I heard the frenzied movement of someone behind me, smelling their panic. I turned around just in time for a maw full of razor sharp teeth to come down on me. For a moment the haze on my mind lifted, and I realized what had happened, what I had done oh Titans _what had I done?_

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I snapped my jaws around the dragonspawn - who it was, what flight they were from, I was too sleep-addled to figure out. But I did know that I had awoken in the middle of the night, smelled something wrong, and saw someone doing something to Verthelion, and I went berserk. I hurled their body to the side, snapping their neck in the process. What had happened? I looked at Verthelion. What had they done to him?

There was a patch of open scales on one of his forelegs, not even the size of one of my claws, and next to it, a shattered vial out of which oozed a thick, viscous red fluid that smelled of... of...

Oh no. I pushed against him. "Verthelion wake up!"

He grumbled and opened an eye. "My leg hurts."

"It should hurt, someone cut it open while we were asleep and poured rust into you!"

He was up in a flash. "_What?_ I mean, WHAT? Who would've done it?"

"I don't know, I killed them before they could pour any more in, but I didn't see who it was. Oh Titans, poison..."

"Well, let's check now."

I took deep breaths. "Right. Right. Good idea." I walked over to the corpse, a trail of blood leading to the dragonspawn, gleaming sword in the grass next to her.

"Feraliona, how could you?" asked my mate. "So, she poured a rust mixture into my cut?"

I nodded. "This is bad, this is so bad!" I wondered, not too long ago, how anything could stop us short of an Aspect. There's my answer. Now I was going to lose Verthelion _again!_ "Let's wake up the others. Maybe, maybe we can find a way around it."

Verthelion's breathing quickened. "Find a way around it? How? We don't have nature magic!"

"I know that, but panicking won't do you any good. Let's wake the others. There's always a way."

Within minutes, everyone had woken up after some complaining, and the situation was explained. Vajarn was horrified at what Feraliona had done. In retrospect, I should have known. I should have known not _everybody_ would accept it. Some would refuse to change. Her sword had been liberated, and her body cremated, and currently we were trying to... "_Calm the hells down, Verthelion!_" Pallasion scolded him. "Panicking isn't going to help you. Just calm down, all right? We already know that we can't help you. So who can?"

Vajarn held up a clawed hand, extending a finger as he listed those he knew. "The Kingslayers, the Cenarion Circle, the Earthen Ring, the Green flight, the Red flight... that's all I can think of off the top of my head."

My mate took several deep breaths. "All right. All right. So then. Could we ask the Kingslayers for help?"

I shook my head. "We have no clue where they are. They defeated Ragnaros _months_ ago. They could be literally anywhere, and likely not close enough for you to reach them. How about the Cenarion Circle?"

Murdonia objected. "They'd be in Mount Hyjal, rebuilding after the war. And judging from how close the Firelord came to winning, they're going to be at it for a _while_. So they're out of the question, since there is no way Verthelion will be able to fly to Hyjal before it's too late."

"I'm just glad Feraliona didn't place all the rust into me. I have a chance now. I'm going to guess the Earthen Ring is in similar straights. I saw some of their shamans over there as well. So, that leaves the Green flight and the Red flight. They're both healing the land that Deathwing cauterizes, the Green flight uncorrupting it, followed by the Reds regrowing life on it. If I follow the trail back, I'd encounter the Green flight first, and I could - "

"Hold on," Vajarn interrupted. "If you follow the trail back? You do not know how far you'd have to go, or even if you'd have to go over the ocean. And since we don't know where else the Green flight is, that leaves the Red dragonflight."

Verthelion pondered this for a few moments. "All right. So it looks like I have two options. We can either hurry to Wyrmrest, where they'll be able to heal me, or you can, can go on without me, and I make a break for the Vermillion Redoubt, and pray to whatever god is watching that I survive the wards."

This made me lurch. "What? But then, then how will we know if you're all right? We'd have to wonder if you'd gotten yourself killed on the way." Moreover, _I'd _be wondering. It seemed all our problems could be boiled down to 'Lack of Information'.

"I don't know. But Wyrmrest is so far away, and we'd need to go through the cold of Northrend, which will slow us. The Redoubt, on the other hand, I could get there. I hope."

Turliona rubbed her hand on the back of her head, looking uneasy. "What do you mean, go to the Vermillion Redoubt? You know those wards will incinerate you, you do not have a chance! You can push it to Wyrmrest, surely!"

Vajarn shook his head, frowning and crossing his arms. "Not a chance. From the concentration of the rust in the amount left over, and how much is probably in Verthelion, there is no chance for him to reach Wyrmrest even if the cold did not slow us. The only chance is for him to go south, and even then, it's a dubious chance."

My mate sighed. "If it's the best chance I have, then I'll have to take it. Keep going full speed to Wyrmrest. I'll go to the Twilight Highlands, hopefully convince them to cure me, and then fly back up. Flying is much faster than walking, I should rendezvous with you eventually."

I couldn't help but fidget where I sat, digging my claws into the earth. Just like that, disaster struck. Verthelion was the one who led us to Wyrmrest. He was the unofficial leader of our little group of 'traitors'. Nobody I had seen get rust poisoning ever survived it. I was so, so terribly worried for him. It felt like the ground beneath me had suddenly fallen to the side, tipping me. His plan to go to the Vermillion Redoubt was nothing short of suicide, but try as I might, I could not pull a better idea out of my mind.

Nalestrasza was probably laughing her tail off at how stupid we were to not come up with whatever obvious solution she had.

"I have to go as soon as possible. Keep going. Do not wait for me, just in case I - " He cut himself off at my horrified expression. He walked over to me and nuzzled the side of my face before pulling back, stretching his wings and crouching. "Good luck."

"You'll need it," his sister sent after him.

"Haha, very funny." He took off, sending a whirlwind of stones flying out from him, angling into the storm-filled skies. He turned south, and soon vanished from my sight, smell, and eventually hearing.

We were separate again.

* * *

><p>The Tirisfal Glades. Dreary, boring, and gray, even more so when shadowed by enormous storm clouds that I began to suspect had covered all of Azeroth. But it was made so much worse by the fact that I didn't know where Verthelion was, or how badly off he was. What did I do to combat nervousness? How did I keep the concern from crushing me into dust?<p>

I trapped Pallasion in twilight prisons.

On a completely unrelated topic, I now have a lot of new scars on my stomach.

"Please be all right, Verthelion," I whispered for the n-th time. Toxins were nothing to be joked about. Only the Twilight's Hammer had the mechanisms to heal us of poison back in the Bastion, a favor they would not be returning. But they only did that via anti-venom. Rust did not have such a thing. It associated with our blood closely, some part of it making it able to replicate like a mold. And Verthelion had it.

It had been several days since he fled south towards the Vermillion Redoubt, and we hadn't made much progress since then. The winds, which had previously supported us in our march north, changed to blow in our faces, forcing us to slow down. And not only that, but several other inconveniences had manifested as well. Murdonia had been struck by a bolt of lightning despite flying below tree level, and it took a few hours before my shadow-mends got her on her paws again. The Twilight's Hammer had attacked us again, in greater force. Luckily, this gave me the perfect opportunity to perfect the twilight burst that hurled Pallasion off me after the first twilight prison. Still, Turliona got a nasty, infected gash on her flank, which served to slow us down even more. All the while, I could not help but wonder where Verthelion was. At least the winds were once again in our favor, which also helped to diffuse the unmistakable stench of plague that blew over from the ruins of Lordaeron to our right, meaning I only gagged _mildly_ instead of heavily.

I toyed with the communication spell in both the physical and twilight realm, plucking at the strands, when suddenly it worked.

I plucked three strings on it in the physical realm, and when the defense mechanisms began to work, I plucked another three, forcing them to overtax, then another three, and another, until the defense mechanisms completely fell apart, restoring all the magic they drained from me.

I froze in my path, maw open in stunned surprise.

My head felt light and fluffy, some unnoticed pressure suddenly vanishing from my brain, sending shivers of euphoria down my back as a sensation not unlike my muscles unclenching traversed throughout my entire being. The others noticed my pause, and turned to look at me. Once the feeling of being liberated from that spell passed and only the absence of some rock on my mind remained, I spoke. "It worked."

Turliona raised an eye ridge. "What worked? What's going on?"

"I can dispel the Old God communication spell. It worked, it actually worked! My head feels so much... _lighter_. Everything's so much clearer." I could just imagine Nalestrasza sitting in her mortal form clapping slowly, going 'Yes, yes, we're all happy. Go you,'. "Okay, come over here, let's dispel it from you." Pallasion was the first in line. I peered closely at him, locating the same strands of magical energy that I had manipulated, and forcibly destroyed them in the same manner I had my own. Within moments, the spell's lines of command runes imploded into nothing, and he gasped.

"I feel so..." He stuttered, looking for the words.

"I know, it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it?"

"Alright, me next," Murdonia said, flying to my forelegs. I collapsed to my mortal form to get a better look at her. The lines were in different places on her compared to me and Pallasion, due to being a drake as opposed to a dragon, but I found them soon enough and dispelled it. She collapsed, purring as her body and mind lightened. It made sense; the presence of an Old God was bound to be oppressive, and what did that spell do but make you always in its presence? It was all we had ever known. Was this how everyone else always felt, and the way we feel is the horrible feeling when they are in range to be whispered to?

For a moment, I shut my eyes, rumbling in my throat at the unbelievable sensation. Was this, was this _normal_ to the other flights? I tried to remember back to my time as a whelp, tried to feel the difference between when I was Red and when I was Twilight. I couldn't pinpoint any difference. Not even the shadow of one.

Then I thought about Verthelion. He still endured the whispers. How much did the Old God take advantage of his isolation from us? If only I had figured this out a little sooner, if only I had solved the puzzle earlier! He would be free!

Turliona reacted much the same way to being dispelled, though finding the correct lines on her dragonspawn body was much more difficult; at least Murdonia had most of her's in common with mine. But once I had, she was shocked into awed silence.

I wanted to think that this heralded new hope for us, that the dispelling of this magic was a sign that we would prevail against all odds in the end. But I thought of Verthelion, and, no. This wasn't a sign of anything. It was nothing more than another step on the journey, another stair on the staircase leading to somewhere, but where it led me to, I didn't know. How many steps had I climbed so far? There was me hatching, becoming a drake, having my age accelerated, being shot down by Lirastrasza... I couldn't count.

Verthelion was heading towards Lirastrasza. How would he handle that? I dispelled Vajarn, who struggled to maintain his composure, but could not suppress a smile. For months, Verthelion had thought that Lirastrasza ended my life. We had spent months together afterward, but still. I rather hoped he could maintain his temper.

Cauterlion smirked as I got ready to dispel him, moving around him in my human form. 'The Old God is practically howling in anger. It's actually rather comical,' he signed. Those who understood him cracked a smile at this.

"I can back him up on that," Sheralion said. "It's absolutely deafening." I dispelled Cauterlion, who's jaw promptly dropped. Sheralion closed his eyes and took a deep breath as I approached him, tensed while I plucked the strands of magic, tiny twilight bursts illuminating my hands as I did so, but when I was done, he had the same reaction as all the others did.

It was done. We were all freed, all of us, except for Verthelion. But Feraliona... would she have done it, if I had dispelled her sooner? Was she behind it, or was it the evil beneath the earth that had her do it? It was my fault. I should've figured it out sooner. Then we might not even be in this mess!

"All right. Did I forget anyone?" I asked, releasing my illusion while still coming down from the natural high of having an unnoticed pressure removed from my mind. A chorus of 'No', 'Nope', 'Not me' and other various confirmations assured me that we were all dispelled. Sheralion and Cauterlion both shook their ears, seemingly in order to relieve the ringing of the Old God 'Howling in anger'. "Okay then. Let's keep going. Our time's running out." As if to prove my point, the next step I took sunk into the ground like it were not there, leaving me in the awkward situation of 3 feet being on the ground and 1 foot... not.

And of course, Pallasion didn't waste an opportunity. "What's the matter, Selriona?" he asked in a mocking tone, struggling and failing miserably to keep a straight face. "Stuck in the dirt? Unable to move? Dare I say it..."

"Shut up, Pallasion."

"... trapped?"

I ripped my foreleg out, accidentally and DEFINITELY not with spite and malice splattering Pallasion with mud. "Come on. We've still got quite a ways to go until we reach Wyrmrest. No time to waste, remember?"

"At least the Old God will not hound us anymore," Vajarn noted as we once again began our march.

I nodded my head. "Yes, that's a plus."

I let the others pass me, and once they did, I looked back south.

"Please be all right, Verthelion."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	38. Chapter 38:Separated

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
><strong>

**Like always, thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing this.**

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

_They are in it together._

I shoved the voice aside, but could not stop the words from bouncing around in my mind. Was I actually starting to consider believing that thing?

My wings felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets, my sides ached and my lungs felt like liquid iron had been poured into them. I couldn't tell how far progressed my poisoning was, but I did know that I wouldn't be this tired without it. A single mantra repeated itself in my head, over and over, occasionally drowning out the whispers of the Old God; _Move move must keep going must keep going if you don't get there you'll die if you collapse you won't be able to recover if you sleep you won't have the strength to get back up move move come on keep going you're getting closer don't you DARE slow down come on Verthelion, move, MOVE!_

My throat was dry despite being hydrated, my wings felt like solid elementium blocks had been tied onto them, with another block being added with every single flap. I felt myself waver in the air, sending ripples out through the twilight realm I had completely submerged inside. Only a quarter of my mana remained, all of it having gone into strengthening myself, flying faster for a longer period of time than I had ever before. The first day I had dared to hunt, but on the second day I lacked the strength to do more than to fly and open my mouth to drink the rain. Still, those animals had done me good. I wouldn't be faring as 'well' as I did now without them.

_Titans, where am I?_ I wondered, before reorienting my thought process from my mantra and the searing, blinding pain coursing throughout my body towards looking around.

Mountains. Smell of the ocean. Arathi highlands. I was close. Provided I didn't collapse into the sea and then drown, I'd make it by the afternoon. Feeling myself dip for the thousandth time, I willed myself higher, draining another bit of my mana to keep me sustained, feeling the all-too welcome relief as some of the pain washed away.

Three days. Three days since leaving the others. I was lonely, and my only company...

_It _was_ your fault. _My fault... it was my fault. I should have known better. I should have predicted that not all of them would go along with the plan. It was - SHUT UP!

I didn't respond, instead returning my thoughts to keeping myself aloft, my wings moving practically by themselves now, air moving heavily and raggedly through my body. Exerting myself accelerated rust poisoning, but taking my time to reach the Red flight would allow it to progress even more by the time I got there. Still, it had progressed faster than it would have if left alone, and three days later, I barely had the breath to fly, and I could_ feel _the iron oxide within my veins, tickling lightly as it passed through my body incredibly fast. I had never noticed the sensation of blood flowing through my body or my heart beating, but feeling it amplified in some places really made it stand out. And it 'stood out' in more and more places.

The mountains passed behind me, exposing myself to the churning, choppier-than-usual waters of the Great Sea. Not only would I not have the strength to swim if I fell in, but the water would, being just as restless as the air and earth, no doubt try to force me below the waves. I couldn't allow myself to land before, and now I definitely couldn't.

_Come on, move. Move,_ I told myself.

The Red flight. I actually flew _towards_ the Red dragonflight, with my sensing of said flight intentionally deactivated. I had lost my nerve in the face of Eralstrasz. But I didn't have any choice but to_ not_ lose my nerve. It could get me killed. Speaking of which, I had to keep the rest of my magic for defense, since they would no doubt attack me out of panic, _justified_ panic. I needed to come up with a plan to get them to not kill me. Obviously the first thing I needed to do was survive those wards. Vajarn had said that it was suicide to try to go through, but they were dragonspawn. I, tired as I was, still had more magical power. I could shield myself, try to put on a burst of speed, and get through. The wards were likely arranged in a sphere around the Redoubt, so being as high as possible and dropping through the wards' area of effect would minimize my exposure. Only problem was the elevating; my wings were as heavy as the Bastion of Twilight, and it took all my will power to go up by a meter, and even then that almost never worked.

Then time to start working on it. _Up, wings! Come on, up, up up!_ It worked... a little. I am not roughly a half meter higher than before. Next step, after hopefully passing through the wards alive, would be to have the patrols Cauterlion mentioned not incinerate me. Even if it were my goal, I was in no fit state to fight them off. A drake could kill me in this state. So I would need to make myself look as harmless as possible...

... and a twilight dragon crashing out of the sky singed from wards would look a far cry from 'harmless'. Although, if I didn't get up, and said that I wanted to talk (Provided I was still conscious, which looked to be of smaller and smaller probability as time passed) instead of fight, and above all _avoided eye contact_, then yes, it might work. Then I would ask to see whoever was in charge, and -

My train of thought screeched to a halt when in the back corner of my mind I noticed how my mind had wandered away from reality and my body continued flying on its own, and decided to continue that. Of course, the moment I noticed that, I had to consciously continue flapping and continue my _Move move_ thought cycle lest the suddenly re-emerging pain make me pass out. While I'd been flying, the mountains behind me had completely vanished from sight, and I was not in the middle of the sea, the barest outlines of land visible in front of me, but still so far off.

I tried to force myself to rise a little more, but managed nothing. Through my exhaustion addled mind, I briefly considered using more of my magic to sustain my strength, but then the logical portion of my brain smacked that idea aside. I'd need everything I had left to survive the wards.

_They have sent you to your death_. This was a suicide mission. Those wards would kill me, and they knew it! No, no, it was MY idea to come here! The land on the edge of my vision began to swim. A single black spot crossed my vision. Despite being a lying, manipulative being of tangible evil, the Old God had a point. I was flying to my death. No, no stop thinking that way! You'll die if you don't, that much is for certain! It wants you to hesitate, to decide to rest, to not reach the Redoubt until it's too late.

The coast seemed so close. I could smell, through the rain and thunder and even within the twilight realm, pollen and flowers from in front of me. I got closer. I didn't know how long, though. But hopefully not long. Not long... not long to elevate myself as much as I could! Up. UP!

Instead of forcing my wings to flap harder, I angled my body upwards a little, letting the winds pass under me in such a way as that I flew upwards with hardly any additional effort.

I'd had quite an interesting thought chain shortly after leaving, before exhaustion had wracked nearly every moment of consciousness I had. I now had an idea as to Deathwing's abilities, and even more important, a way to slow him down, if not stop him completely. When Vajarn fired that blast at him, it deflected along the barrier and the barrier released a massive explosion. I saw its power drain, but quickly recharge itself. I didn't understand magic nearly as well as my mate, but even I saw that the barrier self-regenerated; if even the slightest shimmer of it remained, it would return to full power in seconds. Attacking that thing until it broke wouldn't work, even if the Kingslayers did have the might, since the explosions would completely annihilate everything. An effective case of 'the best offense is a good defense'. So it would have to be dispelled if he still had the barrier, and why wouldn't he?

Then there was the chained Black wyrm within the Twilight Realm. He had flown in the exact same position as Deathwing, and was far larger than myself. He could only be one person; whatever remained of Neltharion. Those chains looked difficult, but not impossible, to break. Even if I could break it, what would Neltharion be able to do? Who said he had any power at all, and was not just the last vestiges of reason in Deathwing locked away by my kind as soon as they could? Could he even leave the twilight realm at all? Oh look at that, my body flew by itself aga - DAMN IT!

The single black dot, floating gently across my vision as if the winds surrounding me tossed it and turned it, split in half. I whined in despair. Land was still so far off, and even though I had apparently been lost in my thoughts much longer than I assumed, it was still a fair ways off. The sun began setting, and my stomach growled at me, furious at being denied the past two days, but that was still nothing compared to the screaming agony my wings were under, the little notch of muscle where my wings came out of my back clenching around the bone, giving the feeling of a pole-arm being impaled through those two joints.

_You will be alone in the end_. The dots in my vision began to replicate at a frenzied pace, and soon dozens of black dots buzzed around my vision like fat flies. I knew what I could do to suppress them, but I needed that power for the wards! A strangled gasp escaped my lungs, which seemed to have a metal vice on them, giving the sensation of being suffocated. I could not use that magic. I needed it to survive. But it hurt so much...

Alright, fine! I'll collapse if I don't. Discipline fracturing, I drained more of my power to sustain myself, but in my haste drew too much; now instead of a quarter, I had only roughly a fifth of my reserves left. Not only that, but the spell I used to renew my strength experienced heavy diminishing returns, and a few dots still clotted my sight. How far was I from land? A kilometer? Half? Two?

I let out a wheeze and felt my upward motion halt, along with the sickening weightlessness of free-fall before I forced my wings to continue flapping again. The air in front of me began to glow a dull orange, but I assumed this was merely me becoming delusional. The glow strengthened and closed in on me, and then I entered the glow, just above land.

Searing pain erupted throughout my body, tongues of flame nipping and tearing at me, prompting me to roar in pain and desperately suck every last drop of mana from my body into creating a shell of twilight energy around me, warding off the pain. Fire roared around my barrier, infuriated that I would deny it the chance to scald my flesh from my bones. I gave lurches of speed, trying to get through the barrier as fast as possible, but was unable to do much more than briefly speed up, and after that I slowed down for a moment, so it was more effort for the exact same results. I could feel my shell weakening, the dots in my vision multiplying again. I forgot the exact details of my plan. Do I drop down through the wards, or do I keep flying? I looked down at the distant ground. It was probably to keep flying straight ahead.

I could feel my shell weakening, and desperately drew on mana that wasn't there, feeling thirst creep up on me as the twilight barrier's glow strengthened, defiant against the flames of the Red dragonflight. I continued on, unaware of anything besides the fading of my barrier, the flames rising around me in all directions, and the need to keep moving, keep moving! Slowly, my barrier faded, and I could not replenish it, being beyond the limit of my magical power. Then, it collapsed.

Flames washed over my scales, ripping and biting and engulfing me in a torrent of pain and agony that made the pain from flying seem like a respite. I screeched, the shock of pain distracting me from my flight as I began to tumble downward, from how high, I was too out of it to notice. Instinctively I tried to exit the twilight realm, to leave the pain in that realm for the supposed safety elsewhere. But in the physical realm it was just as bad, and soon I began to bounce back and forth between the two realms, until finally I settled into the physical realm fully. Fire, crimson and pure, blazed over my eyes. Ruby drakes flew patrols around a gargantuan tree, blossoming red leaves and surrounded in all directions with grass, comparable in size with the one I had seen in Seradane, so large I saw it even from such a distance.

A few of the closer drakes scattered away from me as I careened through the skies ablaze, fire eating my scales, and then...

Relief. Blessed, blessed relief as cold air washed over me and the flames vanished from me. My wings simple folded limply along my back, resting for the longest and _only_ time after three days of continuous flying in a storm. Smoke streamed behind me, dazzling colors like a rainbow laid out before me on the ground as flowers grew and blossomed in fast forward. Was this magic, or just my mind playing tricks on me? The ground here was amazing, beautiful, and... getting close rather fast.

_Wings! Extend! Now!_ I thought in a panic. Creaking and protesting painfully, they opened, catching the wind below them and changing my terminal velocity fall into a partially controlled dive. I hit the ground in a massive explosion of dirt, my momentum sending me flying into the air upside down, letting me catch sight of my scorched and soot-covered scales. I was likely not even two meters off the ground, yet that moment seemed to extend to hours as I looked up past my drawn-out wings toward the stormy clouds, fat rain drops falling towards me in slow motion. My back exploded with pain when I contacted the ground again, flowers rushing past as I continued to careen forward and peeling off several of my scales and scrubbing dirt and grass into the flesh, pressing my wing joints into my back.

I flipped over, my tail-club smashing into a rock and sending tremors up my spine and at the same time pressing my horns into the ground, causing light to flash behind my eyes. I landed on my stomach, my remaining momentum sending me flipping horns over tail several agonizing times before I finally came to a skidding halt, peeling what few scales were left on my underbelly off. Blackness filled the edges of my blurred vision. I moaned as several red drakes settled a few meters in front of my head, looking at me with fear, no doubt afraid I was playing possum. Rain continued to pour on me, running down my scales in rivulets and mixing with my violet blood splattering the earth. One of the drakes took a hesitant step forward, either braver or dumber than the others, since he obviously didn't care that a single blast from me would kill him, since they were drakes, and there was nobody around to cleanse the twilight fire from their scales.

I moaned again, the low noise making him jump, before moving closer to me, lowering his snout until it was mere centimeters from my slowly closing eyes. I managed to croak out two words. "Please... help..."

Then the blackness around my vision expanded, reducing my world to a single spot of red light, and then nothing.

* * *

><p><span>Lirastrasza<span>

I awoke from my well-earned twenty-one hour slumber. With Caelestrasz killed by that bitch Sintharia, the workload on my back had increased dramatically. Velastrasza helped out, as did Baleflame occasionally, when the hunting down of the twilight dragons still in Grim Batol did not occupy their time. And I'm grateful, and at least those mortals, those _Kingslayers,_ had given the Black Consort what she deserved. All I had to do was pick up the pieces from the battles here. Things could have been so much worse, but they weren't, thanks in no small part to those mortals, particularly the kaldorei Sha'la, who had saved my life from those vile cultists. I shudder to think of what would have become of me had she not arrived when she did. As for waking up from my well-earned rest, it was not a natural awakening.

One of the patrol drakes had awoken me, and was now looking at me with a worried expression in her eyes. "Forgive me, but I have important news."

Not willing to show my exhaustion, I sat upright, towering over the drake. Had I ever been so young? "It had better be important."

"We've captured a twilight dragon in the Redoubt's northern section." I perked up. This was... an interesting development. Before we could place the wards, the few twilight drakes we had captured had killed themselves before revealing information, and the twilight dragons that attacked were so fierce that there was no chance of subduing them, only kill or be killed.

"This is great news. It can give us much information on the Destroyer's plans, no doubt." I tapped my front claws along the fertile soil. "I will see to getting information out of them myself."

I got off my haunches and prepared to fly, when the drake spoke up. "Wait!" I looked down, relaxing my wings. "Before it passed out from the injuries our wards inflicted, it said two words. 'Please help'. I don't know what to make of that."

I nodded, before once again extending my wings. "No doubt a ruse to attempt to get us to heal it, only for it to attack us. Return to your patrol. I will see to this from here." I took off into the air with a whoosh, heading in the direction she had provided, north. The nests filled with our eggs, some of my own, rested on rises, watched by dragonspawn. There wouldn't be nearly as many if the mortals hadn't helped, they would be corrupted and twisted into abominations like the twilight dragon I was going to... visit. My children, saved by mere mortals. I was grateful to them, yet at the same time my pride stung. Flying beyond that, I soon arrived at the location of the twilight dragon.

It was a mess, to put it simply. Scorch marks all over it, tainted blood pooled below it, seeping into the earth, scales had been torn off in several places, and its eyes were closed shut, breathing deeply and heavily. Behind it was an enormous ravine of brown earth where it had presumably crashed out of the sky, with flecks of soil scattered about three hundred meters away from the initial impact zone. I stopped infront of the dragonspawn poised to attack it lest it wake up.

I turned to one near its head, Ceres. "Take the others and get chains to tie the abomination down with. I will look over it until you do so."

She nodded. "Right away. All right everyone, follow me!" Within moments, they were gone.

Now I could get a closer look at the male dragon. Its scales were the deep blue/indigo typical of the males of its corrupted flight, with horns bent in the unnatural blade shape. It bled all over, and I decided it would not do for our captive to bleed out. I wove some of my magic into healing it just enough to not die. No sense giving it more strength than it needed. Soon the bleeding had stopped, and I could continue my inspection. Any weaknesses the flight had, I could undoubtedly learn it from this dragon. Nearly all of its mana had been drained, barely a drop of it remained, and it was not out of the question that it had in fact lost all of it, and its body had regenerated that much so far. The right hind leg had been broken at the knee, and the left wing dislocated. I couldn't help but wince in sympathy. That had to hurt. Black splotches covered his hide, where our wards had undoubtedly caused damage. He bore a few scars, including one nick on his neck.

After a reasonable time, the dragonspawn came back and began to chain the dragon, arcing the chains over its back, digging through the dirt until they hit stone and then welding the stakes to it. Within minutes, a series of chains pinned its tail to the ground, wings to its back, body to the ground and jaw mostly shut, enough for it to not be able to fire, but not so much as to not be able to speak. I nodded to them.

"That will do. Return to what you were doing before, I will handle the interrogation." They headed off, and I sat down, waiting for the twilight dragon to awaken. The first captive twilight dragon. This would be useful to our flight beyond belief.

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

Ow. Ow. Ow.

Those were the first thoughts that came to me when I regained consciousness. Everything hurt; my tail, my flank, my claws, my wings. Especially my wings. That was the punishment I had for flying 3 days nonstop with rust poisoning. Was one of my legs broken? Some of my bones felt off. The next thought that came to me was how dizzy, hungry and weak I felt. Of course. I hadn't eaten in days, and who knows how much blood I had lost? And why did I feel slightly pressed into the ground? A groan escaped my fangs before I could stop it.

"About time." My eyes snapped open at the vaguely familiar female voice that reached my ear-plates. In front of me sat a red wyrm, the source of the impatient voice, no doubt. I took a good luck around me. Green grass. Flowers. Enormous tree.

By the Titans, I _survived!_ I was too happy just to have survived my crash to be afraid of the red dragon .I opened my mouth to ask 'Who are you' when something stopped me from opening all the way. I opened my mouth as far as I could, before realizing the reason I couldn't open my mouth as much as I wanted to was because it, along with the rest of my body, had been chained to the earth. Instinct set in; I thrashed, but I lacked the strength to break them. And the weight on my lungs, no doubt the symptoms of rust poisoning, didn't help matters.

"Struggle all you want. There's no escape."

I stopped, looking forward at the female, making very sure not to look into her eyes. "Who are you?"

She huffed, raising her wings briefly and rolling her eyes. "I do not see why it matters to you. Now, this is going to be very, _very_ simple. I am going to ask you a series of questions, and you are going to answer them. Are we clear, abomination?" So I was to be interrogated then. Wait, _abomination? _My tusks unsheathed themselves. "How curious. So those are retractable. I had assumed that your tusks had broken off, all the other twilight dragons have them." I retracted them. "Now. First question. This is a very, _very_ simple one. What is the Destroyer's plan of action?"

Through the dull, throbbing but still very pronounced pain, I managed to scoff. "Wish I knew."

A growl resonated through the air. "What do you mean, you wish you knew? I know that you twilight dragons have high positions within the Destroyer's armies. Alright then." She regained her noble posture. "Next question. What insanity brought you here? What did you wish to do to us?"

I sighed, looking at the earth. "This is going to sound crazy. No way you'll believe this, but I need your help."

The air around me suddenly became scorching hot as the female thrust her head at mine. "HELP? AFTER YOUR KIND HAVE ROUTINELY ATTACKED MINE, STOLEN OUR CHILDREN TO TWIST AND PERVERT, AND GONE AGAINST THE CHARGE WHICH WE ARE SWORN TO KEEP, YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO ASK ME FOR HELP?" I tried to pull away, break my gaze into those hate-filled eyes, but the chains prevented that, so her menacing glare and hot breath were inescapable. The temperature decreased as she pulled away from me. "No. No. You do not ask us for help. We keep you alive so you can give us information, verbally or otherwise, and once your use is ended, we kill you and _end_ your enslavement to the Old Gods. Have I made myself clear?"

"I'm not ensl - "

The temperature rose briefly. "I said _have I made myself clear?"_

I blinked my warming eyes, trying to look down away from her eyes. "Yes."

"Good. Now. How many of your kin live, and where?"

"Fifteen hundred. Scattered. Hiding."

This made her jerk. "_Hiding?_ What do you mean 'hiding'? The Old Gods do not have their minions hide. They have them fight until they die."

"That's what I tried to tell you before. I'm _not_ enslaved." _These people will kill you,_ whispered the Old God's voice in my mind.

"Oh. Really. _Really._ Not enslaved. Oh, of course, how foolish of me." She closed her eyes and brought a foreleg to her chest in mocking apology. "I should have known better than to think that you're enslaved by the Old Gods, even though your flight contains former Red dragons, who would never willingly fight for the Old Gods. How could I _ever_ have been so mistaken?" She opened her eyes and glared claws at me. "Please, forgive my ignorance!"

"I'm telling you the truth!"

She laughed bitterly, closing her eyes. "The truth, of course." She opened them, fixing me with a steely glare. "I should've known better than to think you would tell me the truth. I guess that leaves you with one use; finding out the weaknesses of your kind. Lucky for you, we are above torture." She sniffed the air. "Rust in your blood. Serves you right, but I guess I can heal it a _little_, so you'll last longer." Her orange eyes briefly shown with green light. The weight on my lungs lifted somewhat, and I took deep breaths. "I _will_ be back. Then we can see exactly what is effective against your kind." She turned tail and began to walk away.

"Wait." She turned around, a snarl building on her face. "Thank you, for healing me."

Her face contorted into surprise, clearly not expecting a 'minion of the Old Gods' thank her for something. "Get used to the chains." With that, she flew away.

I let despair sink into my aching muscles. I was a captive. I tried to remember who that Red was. Her voice sounded familiar...

Lirastrasza. I was Lirastrasza's captive! That thought sent me into another spell of thrashing, to no avail. I considered shifting to my mortal form, but when I tried that the chains burned with so much pain I had no choice but to expand back to my true form. I wasn't willing to try the twilight realm, nor would it have helped. I needed to this diplomatically. I needed them to trust me, only then would they cure my poisoning entirely. In order for them to trust me, I'd have to submit to their capture.

I missed Selriona. Once again we were separated, and I couldn't help but fear for her, even though she had demonstrated very well with Pallasion's trapping that she could more than take care of herself. I knew this, but one's heart worries over things the mind scoffs at. Was she all right? And the others? How did they fare? No, it would do me no good to worry about them. I needed to worry about convincing the Red dragonflight here that I was not intent on killing them all, and how would I do that? Lirastrasza was out of the question; she was far too temperamental. Maybe one of the other dragons? Here came one of them now.

The other female stood infront of me after the landing. Her flank's scales were covered in a vague purplish tint, and even now I could smell twilight energy about her.

So she'd survived being engulfed in our fire. Impressive. I looked up at her, again avoiding eye contact, made sure my tusks were retracted, and tried to sound as friendly as I could given my sorry condition. "Hello."

She jerked, obviously expecting any response but this. Turning her head to the side and looking down at me with one eye, she hesitantly said, "Hello? So you're the captive."

I smiled as much as the chains would allow me. "Yes, well, I actually don't want to fight your flight. I came here to talk."

She narrowed her eyes, looking at me head on. "Talk. And tell me, why exactly should I believe you?"

I sighed. Honesty was the best policy here, right? And I didn't have the presence of mind to come up with a believable lie, and it was too late now. "I'll be honest. You don't have any reason. So, who are you?"

Not letting up her suspicious look, she answered. "Celastrasza. I'd tell you what happened to my scales, but you probably already know what happened, don't you?"

"Well, I can smell the twilight energy if that's what you mean." Alright, so she was a lot nicer than Lirastrasza. "My name's Verthelion. I'd say it's a pleasure to meet you, but under the circumstances, well..."

"Verthelion. A fitting name for _your_ flight."

A pause.

"Look," I said. "You probably won't believe this, but I, we, aren't controlled by the Old Gods. They whisper to us while we're still in our shell and convince us that you're corrupt."

"Assuming what you say is true, then how do you know you have been brainwashed? Those who are do not notice it of themselves."

"I didn't. Lirastrasza blasted my mate while she was a drake, and apparently, during her near-death experience she figured it out. Eventually, she found me, and told me the truth." Celastrasza's eyes had gone wide with fear every since the words 'my mate'. When I was finished, she spoke quietly and fearfully.

"Your mate... there's another twilight broodmother?"

I would have shaken my head if I could. "No, no. We've been busy doing other... things. Mainly trying to spread the truth among our flight. So far my sister, Pallasion, and five dragonspawn know how the Old Gods have fooled them." I would have said six, but Feraliona doesn't really count, does she? The name Pallasion didn't exactly mean much to her, though. At this, she relaxed visibly. Was she... believing me?

"Mm-hmm. I see then. That still doesn't answer why you're here. Wasn't being engulfed in your kind's fire _once_ enough?"

I sighed. "I came here because F - the cult gave me rust poisoning in Silverpine. Coming here was my best chance at survival. The plan was to come here, establish I am not here to kill any of you, be healed, and catch back up with the others." Should I really be telling her all this?

"Hold on. Catch back up with the others? What do you mean by that?" She narrowed her eyes. "Where are they going?" she growled.

"That's not important!" I said hastily.

"Like hells it isn't." Her eyes stayed narrowed. "Cordial or hostile, enemy or not-enemy, you are still our captive. And you _will_ still tell us what you can about the rest of your flight."

"I don't trust you to - "

"Exactly. You want us to trust you, but you are not willing to return the favor. It doesn't matter all that much. Whether or not you lie is not for me to decide. Lirastrasza is having a meeting with all of us to decide your fate." A meet - how long have I been here? I couldn't make out the brightness of the clouds from my vantage point. With that, she flew away, leaving me to my thoughts.

Long after she had left, I muttered to myself, "You should trust me because I do not escape through the twilight realm." They might have placed in wards to prevent that like with my mortal form, but the simple fact that I hadn't even tried had to count for something, right? At least I'd kept my nerve around them.

_They have betrayed you. Now, take your revenge._

* * *

><p><span>Lirastrasza<span>

We had assembled near the tree to discuss the fate of the captive abomination. Me, Acridostrasz, Novrastrasz, and Celastrasza had shown up; the others were off elsewhere, busy. I had sent Celastrasza to try to get information out of the twilight, hoping she would have better success than I would. My hopes were well founded, and she came back with a very large amount of information on the twilight dragon. The only problem was figuring out if the wretched thing was lying about it all or not.

"Why should we believe one of those, those corrupted dragons? It will do anything to get in our good graces, and then bite us in the neck when our backs are turned!" Novrastrasz protested.

"I agree, brother," I responded. "The Old Gods go for absolute control whenever they can. The idea that it went for simple brainwashing instead of outright mind control is simply illogical. Every twilight dragonkin we have ever fought had that same _gleam_ in their eyes. They all screamed for us to die horribly. That sounds exactly like Old God control."

Acridostrasz, ever the skeptic, shook his head. "Yes, but if what Celastrasza was told is true, then they thought we were corrupt betrayers of the Titans. It is... understandable they wouldn't be too happy about that. I still agree with you, though. The odds of that situation being true are astronomical, if not impossible outright. However, if we are wrong about this, and the twilight captive really does not wish to harm us, then think about what we are doing. It might not be innocent, in fact it is almost certainly the opposite, but think about this. If he does not wish to do us injury, then he could be very... useful against Deathwing. We've seen what the twilight flames are like, me and Celastrasza. If those same fires could be turned on the Destroyer's forces, then victory might be assured."

Celastrasza shook her head, sighing. "It all comes back to this. If it is lying, then freeing it would be devastating; we were covered in the flames of _drakes_, and it was still so difficult to cleanse. If he decides to engulf us, we'd need the Dragonqueen herself to heal us, or at least our own might combined to cleanse just one of us. However, if it is not lying, then keeping it captive is a horrible injustice. It has a mate, and from the sounds of it, several friends who would all share his correct view of the world. But how are we to figure it out?" She thumped her tail-club on the rain-drenched soil.

I pondered this for a moment. "I say we shouldn't take the risk. The odds are infinitely more likely that it is lying, and we should go on that assumption. Titans forgive us if we are wrong, however."

Novrastrasz snapped his head away from looking at a green bio-luminescent flower to myself. "Now hold on. Celastrasza has a point. On the off chance that it _is_ telling the truth," I chuckled inwardly, realizing that we were flipping between 'he' and 'it', unable to decide what to call him. "Then we are doing him a very grave wrong. Maybe we can not decide whether or not he is lying - "

"I can easily do so!" I exclaimed, feeling mildly insulted.

He rolled his eyes. "Because you are_ such _a good judge of character, like with those Kingslayers." I winced. That was a sore spot. "Like I was saying, we can not decide it, but our Queen can."

Silence ensued, before Acridostrasz politely asked, "What? Involve Alexstrasza, who already has her claws full handling the war with Deathwing and the imminent Hour of Twilight in a matter as comparatively small as whether or not a twilight dragon is _lying? _Does that logic not seem just the slightest bit askew to you?"

Novra sighed. "I know, it does to me too. But this isn't a small matter, not when you look at what the lie could be, or rather, what the _truth_ might be. Think. If the twilight flight is merely brainwashed, then there is a chance at redeeming them, maybe even reversing their corruption, so that we would not _have_ to kill them. And then, like you've already mentioned, having twilight fire on our side for a change would be very welcome indeed. I say we send someone to teleport to Wyrmrest and seek an audience with the Lifebinder about the twilight dragon. Until she judges him, we keep the dragon prisoner."

I considered this for a moment. "All in favor?" Two jets of fire blew into the sky; one from Novrastrasz, one from Celastrasza. After a few moments, I decided the reasoning was sound along with Acridostrasz, and another two jets joined the first two. "It is unanimous, then. Novrastrasz, since this is your plan, you will go inform the Lifebinder of what has transpired here, if she has the time. If she does not, however..." I looked down the ridge towards the twilight prisoner. "Then we keep him prisoner until he dies."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**WARNING! Spoilers for 4.3 ending below!**

**Okay, I need to rant. **

**WHAT THE HELL BLIZZARD? I just watched the ending cinematic for after Deathwing is killed, and all I have to say is, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Changing the dragon aspects into mortals? What the hell? 'Their job is over'? NO IT ISN'T! Watching over something doesn't ever 'end' until the thing you are watching over ends! Just, eh, gah, AAARRRGH! I am not considering anything Blizzard does after patch 4.2 as canon. I don't know WHAT I will consider canon yet, but God knows not that bullshit! I mean, COME ON! Seriously? Pandaria, I could handle. Pandaren were already established to exist. An expansion without a main bad guy? I can handle that too, Vanilla didn't have a main bad guy. But THIS? WHAT THE FUCK? Getting rid of the Aspects? Blizzard, have all those 'WoW is dying' threads finally gone to your collective head and you decided to just ruin the game out of your own volition? Because I literally CAN NOT imagine ANY other reason for doing something like, like _THIS!_  
><strong>

**Okay, rant over. Just needed to get that off my chest.  
><strong>


	39. Chapter 39:Cold

**Disclaimer****: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for beta'ing this.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

As it turned, reaching the northern edge of Tirisfal was a lot easier than I had expected; the majority of the guards were patrolling the roads, which lead to our straight-line trajectory hardly ever being touched, and the few civilians we found wandering in the woods, hunting or for whatever reason, were extremely unwilling to attack us, and we did not attack them either. I tried to put Verthelion out of my mind, to reduce the worry I had to do, what with roughly seven weeks until Azeroth ended. Pallasion had taken over in Verthelion's absence, leading us northward. We had settled in for the night, Turliona and Sheralion huddled together as always, Cauterlion in his bed of dirt, Murdonia sleeping under Pallasion's wings, who slept on a patch ground covered with a twilight prison. Of course, he wouldn't know about _that_ until he woke up. Nervousness about our situation, Verthelion, Alexstrasza, and the world at whole, had settled in my crop like a stone, heavy and cold.

I didn't need to sleep. I could go a week without. But the prospect held such allure, to get away from the real world for even an hour, even if said hour involved facing Nalestrasza... I was willing to take it. I laid down and closed my eyes, clearing my mind of everything.

For a brief moment there was nothing, and then I found myself in a snowy wasteland.

The cold seeped into my bones, and my claws slipped on the ice covering the snowy surface. I looked around, and my breath caught in my throat.

Skeletons. Skeletons of dragons as far as I could see. Drakes, dragons, wyrms, dozens of them, _hundreds_ of them. But they kept changing shape. I'd look at one, but when I looked away and then back, it would be entirely different. There was nothing around me but snow both falling from the sky and underneath my paws, ice covering said snow, and the dead everywhere.

I began to hyperventilate. There was only one place this could possibly be, even though I had never seen it.

Dragonblight.

Turning around several times, the world began to fade into gray and white, when a flash of indigo made me stop. There infront of me, with scales ripped off in several places all over his body and his right hind leg twisted, along with his left wing, stood Verthelion. He did not shimmer the way dreams did.

"Selriona?" he asked, taking a step forward, completely ignoring his broken leg.

I shook my head. "No, no this is a dream. You're not real."

At this, Verthelion seemed taken aback. "A dream... of course, this is a dream. You're not, really here are you? I should've known."

I shook my head. "What? No, I'm here, you're the one who isn't here."

"No, you."

"No, you. This is my dream."

"Then why is this _my_ dream?"

"It's not!"

"SHUT UP!" my voice screamed into our argument. We both snapped our heads right to see, oh Titans. Nalestrasza stepped forward across the skeletons, bones fading into snow where she approached them. "Honestly, you two bicker like whelplings! You're _both_ dreaming! At the same time. I took the liberty of creating a shared dream for the both of you. Now stop screeching!"

Verthelion narrowed his eyes. "Wait, so this dream-Selriona is actually _her?_"

A couple of slow claps came from Nalestrasza's direction, even though she had no hands to clap with. "Well done, congratulations!" she drawled. "You two won't have an hour to talk, so I suggest you get to it."

I sighed, turning to Verthelion. Of course, it would be just like Nalestrasza to bring him into my dream and then expect me to know. "Verthelion, that's Nalestrasza."

"Oh, she's a joy," he said uncertainly. "Is she always like this?"

I laughed. "Oh, you have _no_ idea."

More slow claps from Nalestrasza, who had since sat down on a patch of dirt conjured into existence under her to observe us. "Are you going to waste the time together to talk about my justified attitude or are you going to actually do something productive? Honestly, I give you the generous chance to talk to Verthelion, who you have been worrying about non-stop since he left," Verthelion smiled lightly. Had the Old God told him otherwise? "And you waste it mocking me?"

I flared out my seven tusks and growled at her - wait, seven? Just as I began to notice the seventh, it faded out of existence. "Fine fine." I turned back to my mate, Nalestrasza vanishing into thin air, but I knew she was still aware of everything we said and did. My voice softened. "Are you all right? Did you reach the Redoubt?"

He nodded, but his face betrayed his lack of success. "I did. But the Red flight is less than believing of me. They're keeping me prisoner, and healing my poisoning enough so I don't die, but not all the way." My heart sunk at this. If Verthelion could not convince those in the Redoubt, what chance did we have for Wyrmrest? "But there is some good news. I'm not being kept indefinitely. I overheard them saying that they will bring Alexstrasza herself to the Redoubt to judge if I am honestly not going to attack them or not, and it's perfect because I actually don't, and - "

"You're a mess," I interrupted.

"Well, I guess I would be. I mean, I crashed pretty hard."

I winced. "The wards got you?"

"Hmm, that and three days of continuous flight with rust poisoning. I've had more fun."

I laughed lightly in spite of the seriousness of his situation. _He was alive, he was alive!_ I could almost dance. "Oh I bet you have. I've been so worried about you!"

He nuzzled the side of my head. "I know, Nalestrasza mentioned it. Honestly, she's - "

"Before you go any further," I interrupted, staying next to him. "Keep in mind she's my subconscious. She might not be here, but she can see and hear everything we do."

I felt Verthelion's jaws shut next to my own. "Oh. Can she hear my thoughts?"

"I don't think so. She can hear _my _thoughts, but she lives in _my_ head, not yours, so you're probably safe." We pulled away from each other. Verthelion sat down, and I turned the snow all around us into warm earth, joining him. "So, what do you think we're going to do once all this is over?"

"Hmm. I haven't given it much thought. What about you?"

I nudged him playfully with a wing. "The reason I'm asking you is _because_ I haven't thought about it either!"

He smiled and nudged the flap of my neck. "I know, I know. Well, I suppose it all depends on what actually _happens_ once all of this ends. If the world doesn't end, and convince the other dragonflights to not kill us, we'll probably find a cave somewhere and raise a brood."

I nodded. "That seems logical enough." I could imagine Amanthe with a mortified face, asking 'How can you talk about that so casually? It's, it's - '. I chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, nothing. Just thinking about how Amanthe would be reacting to our conversation."

"Amanthe's the mortal you were friends with in Stormwind, right?"

The dead mortal.

I tried not to let that thought show in my voice. "Yeah. Wonder where she is right now."

"She's in the Argent Crusade, isn't she?"

"I know that, it's just, where's the Crusade right now? Not many people seem to be doing anything about the end of the world being soon. I wonder how many know?"

"Yeah. I wonder." For a while we just sat there, happy in each others company. He was okay. The world seemed just a little brighter with this new information. The dream rippled, like a pebble being tossed in a pond. "Looks like we're going to be waking up soon."

I sighed. "Yeah. How fast an hour passes." The bones of the dead faded out of perspective. "I hope we meet in person again soon." My claws sank into the earth, but said earth was indistinguishable from stone, or grass, or snow.

He looked at me, but the colors of his scales began to blur with the world around us. "Me too. Selriona, if on the off chance the Dragonqueen mistakes my motives, and I'm not freed, I love you." His voice echoed as my vision distorted.

"The feeling's mutual."

* * *

><p>Waking up, I felt much more peaceful than I had before. The stone of anxiety in my crop had disintegrated. With the others still asleep, I decided to practice another spell, projecting a cocoon of twilight energy around myself, warding those in it from corrupting energies. I could modify it to protect against other energies later. I lowered my body to my forelegs, and concentrated, weaving the commands of magic to apply the protection to all those I considered allies within the radius. The spell flew out from me, enveloping the surrounding twenty meters in a purple shell. Channeling my power into it continuously, I expanded it some more. Thirty yards. Thirty five yards.<p>

At forty yards the twilight shell hit a stop. Try as I might, I could not expand it anymore. And while the drain on my mana pool was negligible, the physical effort required to keep it active soon exhausted me to the point where I dropped it within a minute. Fair enough. At least I got it on my first try. I could work on sustaining it later. Hearing a snort, I turned over to find Pallasion waking up, with Murdonia having rolled out from underneath his wings, and out of the twilight prison. It wasn't trapping her, just the acrophobic. He opened an eye, closed it, then groggily tried to get up.

Key word being 'tried'. He fell back down under the prison's magical power, and after a few moments searching, gave me a glare so cold it could freeze air. "I'd normally say something along the lines of 'When you let me out you'll be sorry', but that would be redundant, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would be. So, we're going to reach the northern coast, then I'll fly to - "

"_When you let me out you'll be SO sorry!_"

I rolled my eyes, but disregarded his exclamation, which was so loud it had caused Sheralion to shuffle in his sleep and nudge closer to Turliona. " - Northrend's coast, open the portal, and then we'll be there, contending with the blasted coldness."

"That's all wonderful. Now, if you don't mind, _let me out so I can attack you!_"

"All in due time, Pallasion. All in due time," I whispered, smiling much wider than I should've.

A couple hours of adding new spells to my rapidly increasing arsenal and blocking out the Black-senser's whelpish complaints, the others woke up. Vajarn took hold of Feraliona's sword, and the others formed up in position. I released Pallasion from the twilight prison, and I did not expect what he did.

"Excellent. Now time for some ACTUAL revenge. Let's see how _you_ like it!"

Before I could process what his sentence meant, a force like a boulder dropped onto my body, slamming it into the ground as violet runes formed all around me to the sound of his cackling, pressing my body into my capacitor. If I had been expecting that, I may have been able to counter it, but as it stood, dispelling a magical trap while you're already _in_ it is far more difficult. Threads of magic burrowed into my body from around the trap like a net, and indeed the effect was very similar. Of course, Pallasion had likely just replicated what he had seen me do multiple times, and therefor his wouldn't have those horrible, horrible defense mechanisms the Old God spell did.

So sending a large burst of my power through the spell's entry points into me and then plucking at its threads while overloaded was possible, and that's exactly what I did. Still, it took a few seconds, but when I did I burst up out of the laying down position the spell forced me into and pounced at Pallasion, pinning him to the ground before he realized what had happened, but when he did he growled.

"Oh come on, you copied that from me. Don't you think I'd know the counters to my own spells? Come on now." I launched off of him, my capacitor flailing about on its chain. Before either of us could make a move, Murdonia called out from next to a grinning Vajarn.

"Hey! If you two are done, we'd like to get moving."

At this logic, I growled, but landed on the ground and continued walking in the direction my internal compass told me was north. The remainder of our trek in the Eastern Kingdoms went without event; we passed an old decrepit farm, trampling some undead horses in the process. Their bones crunched in an oddly harmonious manner, and once the necromatic magic faded from their forms, the marrow was oddly delicious for something dead for who knows how long. I made small talk with the others in our group, small signing in Cauterlion's case.

Soon enough, we arrived near the coast, the waves pounding on the coast like artillery shells, sending up blinding clouds of spray and deafening thuds. They all gathered around me in a circle as I drew some of the arcane power out of my capacitor to create the anchor point. I molded it and shaped the runes into threads, commands to do what when and under what circumstances. It glowed teal, illuminating our scales with the color as I cast it, and once it was done, the spell faded until it was invisible to simple eyesight. If I looked closely, however, I could still see the lines of magic.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. "All right then. That's set. We all know the next part of the plan, right? I fly to Northrend and create a portal for you there, meanwhile you stay here and guard the anchor point and wait. I'm guessing it should take about two to three days for me to reach the Howling Fjord."

Vajarn rubbed his chin with a clawed hand. "The plan is good, but what is to keep you from being attacked in Northrend by the cult?"

"Nothing, to be honest. But One, I can handle them. Two, even if I couldn't I can still escape to the twilight realm, and three, the Old God doesn't have the spell on us anymore, so it won't be able to know exactly where I'll be landing, and by extension, neither will the cult." A smile spread on my fangs. "All right, guess this is where I depart." Spreading my wings and crouching, I prepared a twilight barrier to avoid being struck down by lightning. I launched with all my strength straight up, flapping my wings down as I did so, rising high into the sky. I twisted around in the air, and set out for Northrend.

* * *

><p>Northrend is cold.<p>

I know that this is a very well known fact. Whatever part of Northrend is not in a state of perpetual winter is almost always in one; you'd have to be insane to not to feel cold anywhere in the region. Northrend is the best synonym for the word cold, coming before Dun Morogh. I have learned from Amanthe that scholars often do studies about 'exactly how bloody cold was portion X of Northrend this year', and the snow storms would make even the Blue flight ashamed of their relatively warm breaths.

So I feel it is worth restating that Northrend is cold, especially when you are cold blooded and do not have the opportunity to shift into a mortal form, since you are flying. By the time I reached the shores of the Howling Fjord, I was so drowsy I felt like I might've fallen asleep mid-flight. And it would only get worse as we got closer to Wyrmrest.

The cliffs of the Howling Fjord sprawled before me, impossibly high ninety-degree cliffs that seemed like they had been carved out like a Hallow's End pumpkin. A few icebergs dotted the ocean here and there, increasing in density as I neared a solid sheet of ice attached to the bottom of the Fjord, with penguins waddling around on them. It was these penguins whose lives I ended in order to eat, a meat comparable in taste to wolves, but with much more fat in order to insulate against the cold, in addition to their feathers. I soared up the cliffs, using the violent updrafts next to them. Honestly, the winds were so strong, I hardly needed to do anything beyond keeping my wings open.

And of course, what happened the moment my claws touched the barren, tundra ground?

They fell into a sinkhole, courtesy of the impending end of the world. Growling, I clawed my way out, using my wings as paddles until I could lift my forelegs out of the permafrost-encrusted soil onto solid earth, and then pull myself out. The next thirty minutes were spent diving into the ice cold, frigid ocean in an effort to try and get the mud off of me. By the time I felt it was satisfactory, I shivered and sleep seemed all too inviting. I shifted to a human form with thick, insulating layers of clothes and chose a spot with a three meter ring of wilted grass to create the portal.

Holding my capacitor in one hand, I fed a twilight portal into it, watching it try to replicate the spell into an arcane portal. Just before it could, I reached out and quickly added in the spot it was to connect to, the anchor point I created.

A glowing blue sphere opened up, the scar under Sheralion's eyes dominating the portal. He jumped back with a snarl, but relaxed his stance, figuring it was me in my mortal form. "It's about time. So, what? I just go through here?"

I nodded. "Tell the others, and come on over."

"Right." He cupped his hand around his jaws. "Portal's open! Come on!" With that he jumped through, his form getting closer and closer to the portal before vanishing entirely. A few moments later, he flew out of the portal on my end, landing on the frozen dirt with a grunt. He stood, and almost instantly wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.

"Shift to your mortal form. Make sure to give yourself heavy clothing."

He nodded, fangs chattering. "G-good idea." Violet energy began to flicker around his form, but abruptly ended. He tried again, compressing slightly, but failing nonetheless. A few tries later he successfully contracted to his mortal form, a pale man with violet eyes and deep black hair like me, a jagged scar under his eyes and heavy purple fur coats lining his body. He stumbled as a gust of wind blew into us with an unusually loud roll of thunder, and I only barely managed to grab one of the dragonspawn's arms before he hit the ground, hoisting him up.

"It's going to take practice. You should start now." He nodded, and began to take whelpling steps, swaying precariously and often hitting the ground. Soon enough Vajarn came through, followed by Turliona, then Murdonia, Pallasion, and lastly Cauterlion. Each of them shifted to their mortal forms after some failed attempts, and then they, save for Pallasion, proceeded to stumble around hopelessly, trying in vain to find their balance.

Titans, please don't tell me I was _that_ clumsy when I first used a mortal form.

After a few minutes, the last of them managed to get on their feet, and Pallasion spoke from his orcish form. "Okay. We march north. Try not to move too fast, but do at least attempt to speed up as we go. I'm not expecting us to get so far your first day being mortal." With that, Pallasion began to lead the way forward, us all following him, the others stumbling now and then as they got accustomed to being bipedal. We'd move very slowly through Northrend. The others had never used mortal forms in their lives evidently, and then there was the cold of Northrend. We'd reach Wyrmrest in time, no doubt. But how long would it take?

* * *

><p>I sat around the campfire we had created, watching the fire sputter and leap about, trying to escape its prison of stone, loops arcing through it, flares exploding. As chaotic as the element of fire was, it still provided much needed warmth. Holding my hands out, I watched Vajarn in his human form scraping a dagger along a three meter length of bark, shaved filings being hurled into the fire with every <em>shrrk<em>. Far behind him, Sheralion watched calmly as Turliona hurled a dagger into a tree, pulled it out, then threw it again, nailing the exact same spot over and over, despite her being unused to a mortal form. The bones of the bear we had slaughtered had been tossed into a pile, and then reduced to a pile of violet ash from Pallasion's fire. Said acrophobic, along with his mate, were out scouting the area and placing up wards, since I decided that I had used enough magic for one day.

Cauterlion slept under a piece of the bear's skin that we had peeled off, using the fur to keep himself warm. The bear had been a prime alpha, and as such we each had such blankets.

"So, where are you going to get the flag itself from?" I asked.

Vajarn temporarily stopped his carving, looking up at me from where he sat. "Well, I've taken some of the tendons from the bear when you weren't looking. I'm going to fashion those and any we get from other prey animals on the way into the flag."

I breathed out heavily, watching my breath steam in the air despite the proximity of the campfire. "Well, you'd probably do best to get that done soon. We'll be having a hard time getting through Dragonblight." Not just physically, mentally, from being surrounded by so many corpses.

He nodded, slicing off another chunk of wood with a _shrrk_. "I know. I intend to. At this rate, it won't exactly be difficult."

I looked up at the sun-illuminated storm clouds. Despite it being bright as 'day', it felt like night, thanks to the lengthening of the days as we went further north. As such, my sense of time was highly perturbed, even my internal clock. If it wasn't for Nalestrasza informing me in her typical less-than-polite manner that we'd been in Northrend for five days, I would have no idea. "I'm going to sleep. Good night, sort of." Getting up, I walked over next to Cauterlion and pulled one of the bear-skin blankets off the pile laying next to him, curled up on the ground, and draped it over me, closing my eyes and ignoring the cold of the ground.

Waking back up, I looked to the sky, then at the sleeping forms of Pallasion and Murdonia. With time to kill and nothing really productive to do, I walked around the perimeter of the camp, tracing my fingers around the wards suspended in mid-air. I gripped one of the taiga's pine trees, pulling off a few needles, when I heard a pained voice from high above me.

"Ah!" I looked up, searching for the voice.

"Oof!" A rustle of leaves far above me.

"Argh!" I heard something smack against a tree.

"Ungh!" A few of the leaves rained down in a mist.

"Ach!" A gnome smashed into the ground below me, making me take a few steps back before realizing who it was.

"Chronormu?"

Said Bronze pulled herself up, brushing twigs and pine needles off of her robes.

She looked up at me, blood at the corner of her mouth. "Hi! Sorry about the entrance. I miscalculated when to arrive and, hehe, I arrived a moment too early, and Azeroth hadn't moved into that spot yet, so, I teleported into the top of the trees. Fun." She turned her head sideways for a moment, looking thoughtful. "Um, what time have I caught you in? Have you reached Wyrmrest yet?"

I shook my head. "No, we're enroute there right now to lend our aid in defeating Deathwing." I wouldn't get an answer out of her, but it was worth a shot. "Do we succeed in that, by the way? Defeating him?"

Chronormu shook her head. "You know I can't tell you that."

I shrugged. "Oh well. I had to try. So, what brings you here?"

"Well, um... have I told you that you and I are on good terms?"

I nodded. "You have, when I took the boat from Lor'danel to Stormwind."

She blinked. "So I haven't told you that yet."

"But I just said that you - "

"Time travel. Your argument is invalid. At any rate, there _is_ something I need you to do. You remember when you had the problem with the Infinite, right?"

I nodded, grimacing. "Very well, yes."

"Good, because frankly, I don't. I haven't gotten there yet. The point is, one of my future selves told me that we need to bring you back to the Caverns of time for something relating to your own past self." I didn't bother asking what would happen if the others woke up; knowing her, she'd probably bring me back to an instant after we left.

"You haven't been speaking to me about time travel for one minute and already my brain hurts," I said, placing my hands a third of a meter from each other and arcing twilight energy between them in the form of a stream of electricity.

She walked over to me and placed a hand on my knee. "Just go with it." Then the world turned into a whirlwind of sand, scrubbing against my skin fiercely.

When it faded, I was back in the Caverns of Time, in the main chamber. My jaw promptly dropped, and I forgot to breathe. "Right, now. Selriona, let me explain what's going to happen to you. Your past self is going to fly through the chamber towards my future self. Now, halfway across, she, well, _you_ I should say, will look over and see me in my true form, sitting next to you, also in your true form, but she doesn't know its you. So take off your capacitor and enter your true form."

Still struggling to pick up my jaw, I merely went, 'Uh huh' and obeyed her, taking off the chain necklace and releasing my illusion, placing a foreleg over it as to keep it hidden. A flare of bronze light next to me prompted me to look right, just in time to catch Chronormu shifting to her true form to sit down next to me. Like all Bronze dragons, she was smaller and lither than those of the other flights, which simply boggled my mind, because not more than a few months ago she _towered_ over me.

"The hourglass! Look at the hourglass and _sit down!_ And whatever you do, um, uh, stay cool!"

I planted my haunches on the sand, looking at the spinning, gravity-defying hourglass like my life depended on it, when I saw a twilight drake, sticking out like a sore thumb, fly across the space, with a spot of thinned webbing on her right wing and a white scar along her back. My past self. Titans, I looked so _small_. She - _I_ - flew through, and looked my way. Quick, what had I done? I nodded my head, looking at her. A smile spread on her fangs, and she nodded back. Just smile and nod. She flew on, vanishing out of sight. Chronormu let out a breath once she had. "Oh good, that went well."

"What do you mean 'that went well'? Was this really so important?" I pulled my weight off my capacitor. Had I broken it? No, it was still intact. Good.

"It's a matter of paradox! Think of it this way. If your drake-self flies through here and sees her future self, and then grows up to be that future self but never comes here to be seen by your drake self, then your past-self will have never seen you, even though the future self remembers having seen them. So that means that a paradox is created, and even the smallest, most insignificant things can destroy the universe when it comes to time paradoxes. Congratulations, you have just done your part to keep all of existence from exploding."

I got a twitch in my eye. "My brain hurts..."

She sighed. "Well, anyway, thanks for the help with that. Let's bring you back. I'll keep in touch later. I owe you one, for you know. Paradox." She started to reach over with a foreleg. She owed me? How familiar...

"Wait." She did. "Can't you just tell me - "

"No."

"But how about - "

"No."

"You gave me a cure for - "

"No."

"Chronormu's a good person."

"No - Damn you!" Her leg continued its trajectory and fell onto my scales, and the next thing I know, I'm in my human form in the Grizzly Hills, all alone.

* * *

><p><span>Cauterlion<span>

Vajarn carried the flag of truce in his hands. It wasn't exactly a professional-looking flag; the pole is made from carved pine, and the flag itself was nothing more than bear sinews and tendons strung together into something that only vaguely resembled a white flag, and seemed more liable to fall apart at the slightest gust of wind then hold off the Red dragonflight. Reaching Dragonblight was a lengthy process, but we made it eventually. I had long since grown accustomed to my mortal form, able to run with ease, and so had the others of my unit. The past few days we had made great progress, with the two dragons in their true forms, having figured out a way to heat the air around them and counteract our cold blood. It extended to me also, but I needed the practice in my mortal form, and the others agreed with me.

I was jealous of them, to be honest. Signing is much more tiring than talking, from what I've witnessed, but all my signing has made my arms strong enough to carry on a conversation very long, and I don't exactly need to take breaths. But I wanted to be able to talk, just to have a voice of my own. They would never let me live it down, but I did think in a voice. I didn't think in signing. That wasn't the part they wouldn't let me forget.

It was that my voice in my head was that of my mother.

This isn't a surprise, really. Her voice was the first I'd ever heard, and I don't have one of my own, so it's only natural that my thoughts would be in her voice.

But I would _die_ before telling them that.

Skirting around the mountains in Dragonblight's eastern portion proved to be easier than expected; the path was not nearly as narrow, and there were alarmingly abundant vultures on the ground, struck down by the thick sheets of lightning, to provide us food, and the perpetual snow for hydration. I hadn't seen any skeletons yet, even though I knew that there must've been dozens buried beneath the snow. But most were beyond this mountain rise, and in their midst, our target.

'Remember when Enderion tried to eat the gravel in Deepholme?" I signed to Turliona.

She laughed. "He spat it all over the camp!"

'And then it tried to attack us!' I said, taking heavy, silent breaths since my laughter couldn't produce noise. 'That was great. Except for the stones that got stuck under my scales.'

"Ugh, don't remind me." Her human form shivered in reminiscence. "Oh, how about that time when, when... hold on. Hold on!" Everyone stopped to look back at her. "Do you hear that? I think I hear something..."

A figure dropped down in front of us on the snowy mountain trail, not caring for the height. A human male dressed in white and yellow robes, with a violet staff. He held out his glowing hands and enormous chains exploded around Selriona, Verthelion and Murdonia. The chains rose up from the snow in spires, holy energy twisting inside of them, the stunning energies forcing them to lower their heads as if in a daze. "It took me long enough to track you traitors down. How could you possibly turn your backs on The Master?"

Vajarn growled, twilight energy streaking around him as he released his illusion, the three of us following his example. It would be us against him. The dragons were out of the fight. "The Twilight Father, I presume. I should have known you'd come to find us."

The Twilight Father spread his hands out, a glimmering shield of holy energy forming around him. "Why, of course! As leader of the Twilight's Hammer, it is my business to make sure everything is going perfect for the Hour of Twilight's arrival. You see, the mortals have no chance against Deathwing, not if all the Aspects aided them. He has grown incredibly strong, unkillable, nigh omnipotent. The power of his corruption is unwithstandable, to all except your flight. You can ward them. If you aid them, they stand a fighting chance. So while he flies around, keeping the world in too much disarray to form a cohesive unit against us, I make sure you do not lend your aid."

I heard Selriona groan from her holy shackles. "Traitor... former priest... Benedictus..."

"Traitor? There is no such thing as a traitor. Good and evil are merely perspectives to the observer." He raised his hands up. "What is evil to one is good to another! How can we ever know which side is correct? No, there is no good. There is no evil. There is only POWER!" With that, the Twilight Father raised his staff at Vajarn, firing a lance made of yellow light at him. Vajarn managed to deflect the blast, charging full speed to Selriona, placing the flag down on the ground.

"Keep him occupied!" I understood the whole meaning of the plan behind those three words; protect Vajarn while he freed Selriona. Once she was freed, she could easily dispel the others, and even the Twilight Father would stand no chance. Drawing my elementium sword, I ran at him with Sheralion, twilight flames rising from the hilt and coating the sword as I channeled my power into it. I stabbed at him, and he swept his staff in an arc, knocking my weapon to the side and twisting my wrist just in time to block a knife thrown by Sheralion's mate. How could a mere mortal, an aging one at that, be so powerful? He had to have been empowered somehow. His shackles should not have been able to hold _three_ dragons at all, let alone do it without looking tired.

He drew his fist back and punched the air, a blast of holy light sending Sheralion and I flying back, landing on our feet. My scales felt like they had been burned, blistered, the holy light burning deeply through my flesh, not to mention the cold that began to nip at me and chill my blood. The Twilight Father, 'Benedictus' as Selriona had called him, raised one arm to the sky, still protected by his shield. Light flowed out of his hand into the sky above his head, forming three orbs of glowing, frothing light. I snarled. It was all too obvious what he was about to do.

'Hit the deck!' I signed, just in time to leap out of the way of one of the orbs that had been hurled at me, the other two at Sheralion and Turliona. Magic blasted my tail, sending me flying to right under Benedictus's feet. He raised his staff, more yellow power running along through it, causing the corrupted metal to twist and groan as it rejected the magic. He stabbed downward...

... only to be met with the flat of Turliona's own sword. She pulled her sword back, going in for a swipe at his skin, the shield having dissipated with time. With speed like a praying mantis he had the staff up, blocking the strike. He pushed it to the side, twisting her body, and then knocked her aside with its top, sending her crashing into the mountainside with a roar. I scurried back, looking at Sheralion.

He was in a staring contest with the Twilight Father. When his eyes met the enemy's, Benedictus's glare softened slightly. He held up a hand, and an explosion of magic resonated out from him, washing over the snow and cascading along the mountainside, magic scalding my scales and trying to purify my faults, scald them from my soul. We both charged at him together. I thrust out my hands, releasing a sheet of twilight flames as Sheralion stabbed in. The Twilight Father absorbed my fires into his staff, but was unable to escape Sheralion's attack completely, earning an eight centimeter long gash in his side.

"Ungh! Fine then..." I saw where he looked. Over to Vajarn, a stream of twilight energy flowing out of his hands into Selriona's shackles. All at once, I understood what was happening. I tossed myself out of the way as another barrier formed around Benedictus and he raised his staff straight up, both hands clutching the bottom. It glowed like the sun, the light burning my eyes.

One of the first things dragonspawn are taught is to never question orders given by a superior unless they conflict with orders given by one equally superior.

I jumped in between General Vajarn and the Twilight Father as a stream of holy light burst out from it, intercepting the stream with my chest as I reared up, the light punching a hole through my body but leaving Vajarn untouched.

I collapsed to the snow, already beginning to turn purple with my blood, as an explosion of twilight energy washed over me.

The pain faded away, along with the world around me.

The second thing is to give our lives to ensure the safety of our commander.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	40. Chapter 40:Allied

**Dis****claimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

Two weeks.

For nearly two weeks, I was held captive by the Red flight. During this span of time, I became _extremely _ground-sick, and could not stop fidgeting, chained as I was. Lirastrasza stayed the way she had always been; angry and more than happy to psychologically torment me, ie, making sure that I knew full and well how terribly bored out of my mind I was, and how much I needed to fly.

Titans, what had I done to her? If anything, I should be tormenting _her_ for 'killing' Selriona. They kept me alive, though, bringing me food and healing my wounds, such as my apparently broken leg and dislocated wing. From how hard I crashed, I'm surprised my injuries were that 'light'. Then again, I may have remembered the crash to have been harder than it actually was. Save for the rust poisoning (And probably some muscle atrophy), I had made a full recovery.

Acridostrasz had informed me of what was to happen precisely; this 'Novrastrasz' had teleported to Wyrmrest, and would seek an audience with the Dragonqueen, so on and so forth. Nothing I hadn't overheard from their little meeting my first day here. Evidently the audience took some time; Novrastrasz had not returned, neither with the Dragonqueen or without.

Watching the drakes provided some amusement, however. They were simply terrified of me, and when not on patrol they would huddle in groups of six or so, watching at me, whispering amongst themselves.

_These people will kill you_. Would they? Lirastrasza had given the order that I was not to be harmed, but some wouldn't listen to - _FOR THE LOVE OF THE TITANS!_ I do not need this ON TOP of being ground-sick!

The drake that had approached my after my, ahem, extremely inconspicuous arrival, was particularly amusing. He would just sit down alone and look at me from a distance, staring at me like I was some sort of rare flower. I'd smile, and he'd flinch. I'd talk, he'd shiver in fear each time I opened my mouth, fearful of a blast of fire. It was also odd that the drake was older than the dragon. I was five years old, he could be up to _one hundred_. Granted, that's not exactly a lot to us, but still. Twenty times more than me.

So for two weeks I did nothing but lay there, bored out of my mind, sustaining myself on the meat brought to me, waiting, getting more ground-sick and Old God-believing every passing minute. In other words, I had _fun!_

So imagine my relief when, from the tree in the distance, there was a massive flash of red light, before two Red wyrms appeared, one towering above the other. Enormous velvet wings stretched out, with bronze-colored collars on her horns, and at the base of her legs, just above the claws. Violet disks hung on two extra horns below the primary pair, suspended with similar bronze bands. Even from my distance, a feeling of serenity radiated from her, quelling my violent instincts, calming the paranoia that had begun to root itself in me from the Old God. This could only be one person; Alexstrasza. Before Selriona had showed me the truth, I had believed her unworthy of the title of Dragonqueen, but now I recognized why she had the title; her aura of benevolence, assuring me that things would be okay just by being in her vicinity, was exactly why the Titans had given her that authority.

She was my queen.

She opened her mouth to speak, looking down at the male that had teleported in with her, no doubt Novrastrasz. "Where is this twilight dragon that claims to be freed from the Old Gods?"

"To our north, Mother." She turned around to look towards me, a violet disk hanging below her chin, eyes blazing with cleansing flames that pierced deep into my soul. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul; her eyes are windows into your _own_ soul. She walked over to me, flowers blossoming in her wake, the soil fertilizing itself, purging any pollution in the air. She came to a rest in front of me, and I bowed my head respectfully. An Aspect. I had never, ever been so close to an Aspect before. Through her aura of serenity, I could make out her power; she could annihilate me without even a contest. Suck the life right out of my body, burn me to cinders, or simply tear her claws through me with her tremendous strength. A spark of fire flew out of her maw, splitting mid flight into multiple sparks and landing on the chains, snapping them with miniature explosions that, despite being on my scales, left me unharmed.

"T-thank you." I kept my head down. Her gesture was clear enough; I didn't need to be chained. With her here, I couldn't possibly do damage.

"Rise." I did so. The urge to fly and cure my ground-sickness was overwhelming, but I did not dare. This was serious. I looked up at her, but did not dare to look into her eyes out of fear of offending her. "I have been told that you do not wish to fight my flight anymore, that you are not under the influence of the Old Gods."

_There is no escape. Not in this life, not in the next. _I nodded. "That is c-correct."

"As much as I would like to believe this, I find it rather difficult to do so. This is your one chance. Explain to me your situation, and why I should not think you controlled."

And so I did. I explained to her how I heard the whispers of the Old Gods in my shell, what they told me. I explained how living in the Bastion reinforced my belief, I told her about my destined mate, and how Lirastrasza had shot her down and I presumed her dead. I told her how after her death I moved to Hyjal, where she appeared months later to knock me out of the battle, how she had realized the truth, and how she had brought me to realize it, and how we had reached Pallasion. I vaguely felt I shouldn't tell her how the others were en route to Wyrmrest, but I couldn't bring myself to not trust my queen.

"So that's the situation. The others are going to Wyrmrest to tell you the same thing I've said here, and if I had to bet, they're probably in the Grizzly hills by now."

Alexstrasza nodded, closing her eyes. For a few minutes she held that pose, obviously not afraid that I might attack her. Why would she be? Finally, she opened her eyes. "I have decided that you _can_ be believed. What you speak is not outside the realm of reason, and I sense no lies in you, so you are neither lying nor deceived." My heart flew. Could it possibly be? Did she...

Green light lit up my scales, washing all along myself. When it faded, I felt... vaguely stationary. I didn't have rust cycling about my veins anymore. She had cured me entirely. Almost instantly I dropped to my forelegs. "Thank you."

"I have decided you can be _believed_. Trusted, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. While you may no longer wish to aid in bringing about the Hour of Twilight, I do not know if you have any other motives." Good mood? Shattered. "Trust, however, is a give and receive basis. You have trusted us with your life, coming here to be healed, knowing that it was more than likely that you would die. I... find it only fitting that we return the favor. Your flight will not be hunted. Once the Destroyer has fallen, what are your plans?"

"Find the rest of my flight. Show them how things are so that they do not attack your flight. Essentially, not go extinct. M-my mate, last time I saw here, was working on a way to dispel the spell that allows the Old Gods to whisper to us no matter where we are. She's probably got it dispelled from the others by now, but I still have it."

The Lifebinder nodded. "Prevention of extinction, an honorable goal. I trust you are aware of the impending Hour of Twilight?"

"Elemental instability, roughly a month and half left, right?"

This made a small amount of surprise appear on the Dragonqueen's fangs. "A month and a half? How do you know how much time is left? Even I do not." Of course. Wasn't it Nalestrasza that had figured that out? It would be good to leave her out, lest it make Selriona look mad.

"My mate has a... _friend_, I shall say. Don't really know how to explain it."

"Hmm. So as I was saying, you know of the Hour of Twilight, and even its approximate date. I do not believe that you and your... group... are just going to sit back and let the end of all life possibly fall on them, will they?"

I shook my head, still on my forelegs. "That was one of the other reasons they - _we_ - venture to Wyrmrest. To aid in defeating Deathwing." Did she flinch slightly at the name Deathwing?

"The gesture is acknowledged, but when the time comes to... end him," She looked down dejectedly. "Every wyrm of my flight will not be able to participate. Only the most elite of fighters can, otherwise it would be a massacre. What makes you powerful enough to warrant aiding in the final battle?"

"Our flames. If his armor plates are removed, we can set the scales beneath in flame, flame that he does not have the type of magic to cleanse. We can also give... give the aid of the twilight realm."

She considered this for a moment. "Twilight fire would indeed be a valuable asset to... to defeating him. But the twilight realm is inhospitable to those not of your flight, is it not?"

I shook my head. "Only if we wish it to be while inside."

"Hmm, interesting. As much as it gives me unease to make use of such corrupted mechanisms, desperate times call for desperate measures. You may rise." I did, looking at her. She had a light smile. "For until Neltharion is defeated, the Red dragonflight shall ally with you and those you lead. They shall be admitted to Wyrmrest so that when the time comes to develop a plan, you shall aid. Neither you nor they shall be harmed. I will teleport us both back to Wymrest. However, I will first inform Lirastrasza of my decision. You may come listen."

I nodded wordlessly, and followed after her, making sure not to look at any of the others. I felt out of place; I _was_ out of place. Alexstrasza walked up to the tree that dominated the Redoubt, where Lirastrasza was currently lazing. The moment she approached, however, she snapped up. "Mother." She took one look at me. "Oh, so he _was_ telling the truth." She held her mouth shut afterward, and I didn't need to be psychic to know that if Alexstrasza were anyone else, she would be opposing her decision.

_Because of her, you thought your mate dead. Because of her, you suffered those long months._ Shut up, shut up! "Yes. I am returning to the Temple, and bringing him with me. He will aid us in ending the war with Neltharion." Saying 'Neltharion', she looked down, but then back up. "Go on the offensive. Hunt down the Twilight's Hammer so that they do not interfere, but under no circumstances are you to kill any member of the Twilight flight unless there is no other option." She said those words with some reservation, but still did. I don't blame her. I would be unsure as well. Some of our kind were her _children_.

Red mist began to seep from the Dragonqueen - from _my_ Queen, and she turned to her mortal form, a tall elf with blazing red eyes, red hair and similarly tinted skin, and retained horns. It was custom that when the greater dragon is in their mortal forms, you do so, and within moments both Lirastrasza and I were in our mortal forms; me a human, her a blood elf. I bounced on my feet, eager to relieve my flight sickness. Already, I could breathe more clearly now that my poisoning had been cured.

"What do you mean not kill them?"

"Incapacitate them." I flinched at that, however hard I tried to conceal it. "They may yet be redeemed."

Lirastrasza curtseyed. "As you wish, Lifebinder."

Alexstrasza nodded, before a blue-white light lit up her hands. The next thing I know, I felt like I'm being tugged through a tunnel by a rope around my waist, and then...

I saw the inside of an enormous building patterned bronze and gold, which could only be Wyrmrest.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"Come on. Come on..." I muttered, weaving another series of shadow-mends into Cauterlion's gaping wound. Vajarn had freed me the moment before Cauterlion, brave, stupid dragonspawn he was, got skewered by a shaft of holy light. Instantly I released a twilight burst, and while Benedictus was distracted with not being killed by that, freed the other two, and pulled us all into the twilight realm, leaving Benedictus alone in the physical realm.

Cauterlion was almost dead by the time Vajarn pressed snow to his wound and I desperately cauterized his insides to stop the bleeding, which may or may not have been the smartest move on my part. One on hand, the bleeding had largely stopped. On the other, I had burned his insides, as if he wasn't injured enough already.

Just looking at the wound made me sick; a clean, perfectly cylindrical hole had been punched through his lungs, narrowly avoiding his heart. As it stood, he hardly breathed at all, and several times Vajarn had to give him mouth to mouth to restart said vital process. I knelt in my mortal form, watching as Vajarn pressed snow onto the wound in attempts to stop some of the re-emerging bleeding.

As I extended his flesh back together, blood vessels regrew, but were unattached to each other, so the ones I cauterized initially reopened, and so Vajarn had to constantly suppress the bleeding with snow, which didn't help his cold-bloodedness either. The others crowded around, worried, especially Sheralion, whose expression was nothing short of horrified. More shadow energy lit up my hands, and the fifteen centimeter wide hole, half the size it had originally been, shrunk again, Vajarn pressing more snow into the wound where it melted near instantly. But it wasn't perfect. Shadow healing could only go so far, and each heal began to have diminishing returns. The fact that nearly all his blood was on the snow in the physical realm didn't help matters either.

Turliona had gotten off easy; a simple concussion and a few bruises from being tossed into a mountainside. But we'd been here for so long; Cauterlion's soul hung on by threads. Several times his eyes flickered open and he took rasping breaths through ruined lungs before passing back out, but these moments grew fewer and farther between. He stood between a rock and a hard place. If we didn't heal him, his lungs wouldn't recover. If we did, then the bleeding began anew, and he lost even more blood. My capacitor was drained dry, all its power having gone into replenishing my mana pool, which I, with another healing, completely expended.

"I'm out. Pallasion, you take over." Wordlessly, we switched places.

"No, no. Come on breathe, _breathe_." Vajarn pressed his jaws to Cauterlion's again, who's body had once again stopped the process of inhaling and exhaling. After a few tense seconds which seemed to last days, he pulled off again, trying to hold Cauterlion's wound together, keep it from expanding as he raggedly breathed in and out, so much of the air simply leaking out of the hole in his chest. "Continue." Pallasion spread his hands and wove his twilight magic into him, but the effects were much weaker than my own, on top of the resistance to such magic Cauterlion's body had naturally built up. Sometimes building a resistance to something was good; it was going to get Cauterlion killed.

I didn't dare speak my thoughts, but as time passed it began to seem more and more likely that he would not make it. We hadn't the medical supplies, and while Vajarn knew what to do with what we had, it didn't seem like it would be enough. Murdonia volunteered to fly towards Wyrmrest and call for help, but Turliona reminded her how far Wyrmrest was; by the time she got there, Cauterlion would be either dead or stable. Not to mention getting blasted to ashes.

"Come on, Cauterlion," Pallasion murmured, watching as Vajarn tried his best to help him breathe by compressing his diaphragm. "We're so close. Just pull through, and we can get you some real help."

It went on like this for several more minutes, but it felt like hours, us occasionally eating snow to hydrate, Cauterlion's blood pool slowly spreading within the twilight realm. Pallasion completely ran out of mana almost twice as fast as me, and by then Cauterlion still had a gaping ten centimeter hole through him. There was no way he'd make it. As midnight fell, Cauterlion experienced another spell of not breathing for the seventy sixth time. Four minutes of trying to revive him later, Vajarn shook his head. "If we had the supplies, maybe. But out here, in the middle of nowhere? He was dead the moment he intercepted the blast."

Sheralion lowered his head, his voice barely above a whisper. "This is my fault." Nobody told him it wasn't, but nobody denied it either.

Vajarn laid Cauterlion's body on the ground and stood up, having us all clear a ring around him. He turned to the still body. "Thank you for your service to the Twilight flight. You will be missed." A bolt of twilight fire lit up the General's hands, and soon Cauterlion had been reduced to glowing blue embers.

Nobody spoke as we ventured on through the mountain pass. Once I judged we were far enough from where the Twilight Father had attacked us, I pulled us into the physical realm. Once we had, we all gathered to deal with the other major problem; the flag of truce had been destroyed. We worried how we'd get the Red flight to not kill us now. The Twilight Father's holy nova had caught it, and if it were just the tendons that had been unfurled, we could have simply rewoven them and be on our way, but the wooden base was disintegrated.

"Maybe we can just yell that we're here on truce? They'd hear us," Murdonia suggested, tearing out the intestines of a vulture.

Vajarn sighed, exhaustion written on his every scale. "Perhaps. But for now, I think we'd do well with some sleep."

I nodded. "That _does_ seem like a good idea." Despite being an adult, the process of healing Cauterlion had taken a lot out of me. Any amount of sleep sounded divine. Pallasion opened a portal to the twilight realm, and soon we were all asleep within its safety.

* * *

><p>The next morning we reached the main body of Dragonblight, looking down from the mountain our mortal forms were perched on. I knew for a fact that the shrine of the Green flight was far to our left, and an enormous ice lake glinted on the horizon to the right. Looking forward, the bones of the dead littered the snow, ribs sticking out of the snow like jagged metal spires, vultures flying around and occasionally being smited by lightning, all the the tune of dark gray clouds hanging over the scene. If Dragonblight in my dream had made me lose my nerves, then in reality it tore my nerves out of my body, burned them to ashes, and then scattered said ashes through the infinite expanses of the Great Dark Beyond.<p>

As much as I wanted to will my foot to move forward, I couldn't bring myself to move closer to the bodies. This is where dragons go to _die!_ And I'm going there!

I could tell the others harbored the same feelings. None of us could bring ourselves to move, even when our target was visible in the form of a faint glow far in front of us, the telltale sign of Wyrmrest.

I was worried that Verthelion hadn't caught back up with us. He'd said that he would as soon as he was healed! The Lifebinder was going to judge him, how could that have gone wrong? Maybe she hadn't had the time, and they still kept him? That thought ate at me from the inside out; he had been so wounded in my shared dream, what if he got _worse_? What if -

"We need to keep going," Vajarn spoke finally, breaking the silence and jerking me out of my thoughts. I don't like the idea of being down there anymore than you, but we have to. The longer we wait here, the harder it will be to keep moving. Shaking, the human form of Vajarn moved a foot forward, planting it with a crunch on the ice-glazed snow, breaking the surface to keep from slipping. The General let out a sigh, and moved another foot. Hesitantly, Murdonia followed suit, then her mate, then the two remaining of Vajarn's troops, with me last to get my nerve. As hard as it was, we marched down the mountain, our heavy jackets keeping warm as our journey down passed in silence, none of us daring or able to speak in the presence of so many of the dead.

Dragons don't die of age. These had all died of some other reason. Had they become sick, and suffered days, weeks, months even, before dying? Or had they encountered something that went against their charge, and died trying to destroy it? Did Dragonhunters find them, and injure them mortally near to Northrend? Or had the native life of Northrend ended them, or maybe just the cold itself? Regardless, each body here was a life cut short by suffering, each one a tragedy, and I could not shake the feeling that I would join them in kind, however much I knew it was simply Dragonblight itself making me think those things.

We passed a Magnataur camp, the herd watching us from the stony hill that sheltered them from the wind and snow, not daring to attack us, picking up on the scent of dragonkin. Smart. From what I'd heard, Magnataurs hated all other life unless it was stronger, considering any other individual pathetic compared to themselves, even others of their kind. Strength ruled their world, which made sense now that I saw the conditions they lived in. They were wise to give dragons a wide berth.

As the day wore on, the pillar of Wyrmrest drew ever closer, looming up before me. Its light, coming from a source I couldn't make out, shone into the heavens, piercing the storm clouds and even driving them back within close proximity. The scent of the Red flight reached me, blown about by the wind, before I had even a chance to sense them. A mixture of anticipation, hesitation, and worry churned about in my stomach, butterflies multiplying at an exponential rate as we got closer.

Soon, I felt a dull pulsing at the front of my head, the process of me sensing the Red dragonflight.

Turliona put a hand on her head. "I can sense them, I can sense the Blue flight. Titans, I've never felt so many." A few steps later, I felt another signal begin pulsing on by skin, one that I knew to be different. The signal of an Aspect, and there was only _one_ Aspect of the Red flight.

My mind began racing, jumping to conclusions. Alexstrasza had stayed in Wyrmrest? Did that mean she wouldn't judge Verthelion, that he was left in the Redoubt indefinitely, being driven to insanity by the Old Gods? I'd let him down. He probably hated me, if not on his own, then by being worn down mentally, every whisper taking away a little more of his sanity. But there was no sense going back. We had a month and a half until the end of the world. There was no more turning back, no more zig-zagging. From here on out, it was straightforward, it was all in.

The base of Wyrmrest came into view, and I paused a moment to take in the majesty of the structure, the single holiest place for the Dragonflights.

Silver, bronze and gold towered as high as I could see, ending in the fountain of light. I saw dragons of all flights (Except Black, go figure) patrolling the air immediately around the temple, seemingly unafraid of the lightning storms, and indeed none of them were even close to being struck down. The breathing of our little group began speeding up. My skin tingled, and the same urge to run away that had appeared in Lor'danel surfaced in me.

I fought it down. There was no going back. I touched my capacitor, recharged with arcane energies, and continued walking forward. How would they react? They'd try to kill us, no doubt. We'd tell them to stop, that we were here on truce. That would save our lives. But how would we earn their trust?

For some odd reason, we actually reached the steps of Wyrmrest without being attacked. What was going on here? Everyone followed me in silence, walking around the outside, looking for a doorway, or somebody to speak to. Finally, we reached a doorway, blocked by two drakonids, one Blue, one Green. Both held identical spears the same color of Wyrmrest itself. As we got closer, they crossed spears, snarling at us. Well, this was it.

I was just about to open my mouth to speak when someone's voice boomed out, amplified by the no doubt cavernous internal space. "They are to pass." Like that, the drakonids uncrossed their spears just in time for me to see who had issued the command. A tall blood elf, towering above their regular height, with blazing eyes and red hair. As she walked closer, the Aspect signal I had picked up grew stronger.

Alexstrasza.

But it wasn't her I was focused on. Just behind the Dragonqueen was a human male dressed in heavy gray jackets, with indigo eyes and black hair tinged with violet. I could not believe it. What was he doing here? How had he arrived? Before I knew what was happening we both ran to each other, meeting up halfway, me embracing him in a hug, which he had little knowledge of; it _was_ a mortal custom. "Verthelion! You're here! And, and you're alive!" _My mate was alive, he was here! _

Hesitantly, not sure what exactly to do in the gesture, he hugged me back. "Yeah, fancy that, huh? I wasn't expecting you to arrive so early, but I spotted you from higher up, and - "

Vajarn cleared his throat. "As happy as I am for the two of you, wouldn't it be better to discuss this inside?" I sunk slightly to the twilight realm, but my body there was only an illusion, my physical self completely solid. Where Alexstrasza stood in the physical realm, there was a void in the twilight realm. For a moment this alarmed me, but I thought rationally. Corruption showed in the twilight realm as a glow; it was only natural that the Lifebinder be the antithesis of corruption, making her show up as a void in the twilight realm, the complete absence of corruption.

Alexstrasza's attention went towards him as Verthelion and I released each other. Slowly, she nodded. "Yes, it would. Enter. We will have time to go over explanations once Demestrasz tells you where you may rest here." She turned around, her cloak trailing behind her as she led us through the twisting and winding corridors of Wyrmrest. Several times we passed an alcove, which had bedding inside, some occupied by a dragon in their mortal forms, but the occupied ones were few. I thought I saw Chromie sleeping on one of the beds, but my eyes must've been tricking me. Another occupied room was occupied by a human male in red clothing along with a female in similar clothing, night elves, etc.

Eventually, the Lifebinder led us out of the ring of rooms right inside the lower floor and went in deeper, coming out into a vast opening, a room that could've been able to house two Aspects in their true forms, maybe three. A few drakonids from the four flights present stood at the walls, spears ready. They all kept their eyes trained on us, and if it weren't for their steady breathing, and where we were, I would have thought them statues. We were lead to a Red in human form. He bowed to his Aspect. "My queen, what brings you here?"

"These are the... visitors I mentioned, Demestrasz. I trust their alcoves are ready?"

"Yes, they are." As much as he obviously tried to hide it, some disgust, disgust at _us_, still crept into Demestrasz's voice. "They are the eastern most ones. You'll know them by the octagonal marks I left at their entrances."

I curtseyed to him. "Thank you. Should, we get going?"

Alexstrasza nodded. "Yes. You will have some time to rest. Verthelion _will_ fill you in on the situation. And one more thing. Wyrmrest is a strict sanctuary, a beacon of hope in these dark times. Those who fight within its grounds will suffer dire consequences."

I nodded dismally. "I understand."

Verthelion gripped my hands, making Alexstrasza tilt her head sideways, the shadow of a smile pulling at her mouth. No wonder she was so cold towards us, well, cold in comparison to what I'd heard about her. Our flight had put her through hard things, things nobody should have had to endure. The Ruby Sanctum, for one.

My mate led us through the ring of rooms in the first level, stopping at an alcove that, sure enough, had a red octagonal burn in the entry. Three others had the same burns, but we entered the first one. "Well, this is it. Let's go in," he said. We did, sitting on the ground. The alcove was a good place, roughly the size of the room I had slept in during my stay in Stormwind with Amanthe. Two beds were pushed to the sides of the hemispherical room, red mattresses with sheets. The sheets were also red, with a golden Wyrmrest dominating them. From the top of the Temple came two golden wings. We all sat on the floor, and Verthelion put his hands together. "I... guess I owe you an explanation, don't I?"

We all nodded wordlessly.

"All right. So, while I was in the _tender_ care of those in the Vermillion Redoubt, someone called Novrastrasz was sent by Lirastrasza to seek an audience with our queen about, well, me. A few hours ago, she teleported here and judged me, deemed me to be believable, and teleported us both here after I explained that you were on your ways here. That's why you weren't attacked; they already knew you were coming, and were under strict orders to not attack unless attacked first."

Sheralion nodded. "Go on."

"Well, here's the basic situation. She believes we aren't controlled by the Old Gods, but doesn't entirely _trust_ us either."

"Stop right there," I said, his words bringing memory to life in me. "Before you go any further, I need to do this." I held out my hands, looking for the faint lines of magic on Verthelion, and began plucking at the strands. Within seconds, Verthelion was freed from the Old Gods, and the wonderful feeling from it made his legs collapse from underneath him. Luckily, I managed to catch him.

"It, it feel so, it feels so... what did you do?"

"I dispelled you. The Old God won't be giving you trouble anymore," I told him.

A smile split his face as he pulled himself up. "Thank you. Thank you so much. Selriona, I - "

I returned the smile. "So what were you saying before I dispelled you?"

Verthelion shook his head and turned back to the others. "Right, so I was saying, the Dragonqueen does not trust us, but is willing to ally with us to kill Deathwing." I heard everyone, including myself, gulp. Sure, we all knew that we had to at least try, but hearing it so up front unsettled me. _Kill an Aspect._ That was a fair bit of information to digest. "Yes, I know. But here's what we've got going so far. The other Aspects are due to arrive tomorrow, and Thrall is already here today. The Kingslayers will also be arriving, one day after the Aspects. They got delayed, apparently. Something about the cult. So anyways, we show our best sides here, show the other flights we _can_ be trusted, and when the Liberality Confederacy arrives, we'll _all_ have a meeting to discuss the... battle strategy."

Vajarn perked up at 'battle strategy'. If there was one thing I'd learned about him, it was that he excelled at battle strategy.

Turliona asked, "So, now what?"

"Now we can go to sleep," her General answered. "It is approaching night; we've been journeying a long time to get here. But first, Turliona, I need to have a word with you."

She nodded. "Yes, General." The two left, followed by Pallasion and Murdonia, in addition to Sheralion.

I turned to Verthelion. "We're in Wyrmrest."

He smiled. "I know. I can hardly believe it myself. And even better, we are not going to be killed. We've been allied with." _Allied_. That word seemed to carry so much weight. For so long while we had ventured to Wyrmrest, we had had no real allies. The last ally I had was... Amanthe. And she was Titans-know-where. And not only that, we were allied with the _Red dragonflight!_ The ones that we had to fear for so long, if not for the time when we sought to kill them, then for them thinking we did wish to, and attack preemptively.

I returned the grin. "Things are looking up. We might actually have a _chance_."

"Oh, it's not over yet. We still have to keep a good face on, not to mention the whole issue with the Worldbreaker, you know, killing him. That might not go so well."

I laughed lightly, even though the seriousness of his words weighed on me. "Oh come on, Verthelion. We're twilight dragons. Killing other dragons is what we're made for."

* * *

><p><span>General Vajarn<span>

Verthelion and Selriona continued to talk while I pulled Turliona aside, the others entering two of the remaining three alcoves.

"What is it you wished to talk about?" asked the human in front of me that was my best thrower.

"I need your throwing knives to perform an experiment on."

Wordlessly, she reached into her robes and pulled out a bundle of a dozen purple hilted, jagged daggers, handing them over to me. I nodded. "Thank you. These will be given back to you once I am finished with them."

"If I may ask, General, what you going to do with them?"

I smiled. "A little surprise. You'll see what it is in due time, don't worry. You may go to sleep."

She nodded. "Thank you." With that, she headed off to find Sheralion, and I to find a Blue willing to help me in my endeavor. As it turns out, it wasn't all that simple, with the Blues having recently been devastated by the Nexus War. After a few minutes of searching rooms, however, I came across one alone.

"If I may have a word with you?" He looked up from the magical tome he was studying. From his scent, I could discern he was a dragonspawn general much like myself.

"What do you want - oh. You're one of those twilights."

I rolled my eyes. "So I am. I find myself in need of your assistance."

He scowled. "What kind of assistance?"

I took out Turliona's daggers and explained the task to him, including what they were to be used for, and why I needed his help. At the end, he had one hand on his chin. "It could work. Yes, it may very well work. Let's begin. then." At his agreement, I took out the first dagger and placed it between us. He held out a hand, releasing a twisting beam of purple arcane energy onto the dagger, while I channeled twilight energy onto it. The arcane energy formed a sort of container, letting the twilight energy I channeled form a coating on the weapon, infusing it with twilight essence.

For minutes we channeled the energies onto it, after which we paused, expended of mana, and the Blue, who's name I gathered was 'General Bogag', took out a mana crystal from the various containers scattered throughout the room, and recharged us with it. We continued this process, channeling power onto the dagger, so that when the time came, each of the twelve would be seeping with twilight essence, so much that even an Aspect would be wise to avoid them.

My plan was coming together. Just hope nobody stumbles on them and misreads my intentions.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

****Thanks to those who read, favorited, alerted, and extra big thanks to those who reviewed; **Ori Whitedeer, Septoth, IXthy, KennHyrulian, wanda von dunayev, DarkVynAngel, 11SnowLeopard11, nightdragon0, Belladelias, Tich, Keelosprower15, xXMadCatXx, Diloph, Apocalypse Survivor, lisethshade14, Shinkicker, Mirae-no-sekai, fanmanbookman, I love cute things, Philoworm, Alexander Lacerta, anipotter13, Draikor, ILoveWow, Sindraelyn, the anonymous reviewers Loki, Lovmp, Umbraz/mrumbraz, Coren, KyreanNightblood, Ggghuys, Pyyrus of Hades, -blank- ,and Dude.******

**Special thanks to Mlaia3 for continuously reviewing, and to Dusty the Umbravita for both reviewing and beta'ing this.**


	41. Chapter 41:Defender

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**EEEEE! This chapter marks me having more beta'd chapters than unbeta'd. Thank you so so SO much to Dusty the Umbravita for being my beta.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

Waking up after my rest, I momentarily found myself startled at my surroundings, before the events of the last few days came back to my memory. Uncurling from my position in the bed, with the blankets used as a makeshift nest, I pulled myself to my feet, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. Verthelion still slept, having gone without that commodity the past few days during his capture. I left the alcove, wandering around. I saw Pallasion and Murdonia sharing a bed in the room next to ours, followed by Sheralion and Turliona each taking one of the beds in the next one. Vajarn was sprawled across a bed in his own room, and his lips appeared cracked, like a mortal's did whenever they got thirsty.

I found myself wandering, playing with the capacitor around my neck. I wandered into the chamber we had met Demestrasz in. Looking around, I saw a few stairs winding up into the ceiling that I had missed before. Why was there a staircase in Wyrmrest leading up to the second floor? We could just fly up there. Then again, maybe it had to do with the relatively large number of mortals that had been here recently. Not wanting to leave Wyrmrest and shift to my true form to fly up, lest I unintentionally draw fire, I resigned myself to the fate of stair-climbing.

The second floor had little on it; a circular ring around with multiple tables and maps covered in Draconic writing, in addition to a massive hole in the middle which led down to the first floor. There were no stairs higher up. Having nothing better to do at the moment, I walked to the balcony, where the ruby drakes who no doubt awaited orders there currently slept. I looked down at the snow, casting the warmth aura about me to prevent the slicing winds from affecting me. Out in the snow were a few dragons; two Reds, a Blue, and a Green. One of the Reds, a female, was currently engaged in a struggle with the Green, forcing each other to their hind legs and snapping at each other. I raised an eyebrow. I thought Wyrmrest was a sanctuary?

The Green opened his maw and a stream of green mist washed over his opponent, and the Red, not having expected this, collapsed, unconscious. The other two had just sat, watching the fight the whole time without moving.

Deciding to see what was going on, I took a running start and jumped down the side of Wyrmrest. The air rushed past me, filling my ears with the sound of wind. I let my illusion fall off slightly, just enough for my wings to unfurl from my shoulder-blades and turn my deadly fall into one not-so-deadly. I landed on the ice-covered snow with a thud, cracking the ice and strengthening my illusion so as to retract my wings.

The other Red, a male, healed the injuries of the two, making the loser groggily open an eye, stand up, and bow her head to the Green.

"I thought Wyrmrest was a sanctuary?" They all snapped their heads towards me when they heard my voice. "Or did I miss something?" I asked, slowly removing my illusion, ready to fade into the twilight realm should their nerves get the best of them.

All four dragons' faces twisted into snarls as I completed the removal of my mortal form, but obviously remembered I wasn't to be harmed. The Green spoke. "Sparring is allowed outside the Temple grounds."

"Oh, so you were sparring with her?"

"Yes..." growled the Red male. "We're practicing grounded combat. So far I am the victor, but Inceptikus is getting much too good for his own good."

Inceptikus shook his head, glaring at the Red despite his closed eyes. "You better watch out, Vulcastrasz. I'm catching on to your little tricks quickly."

"You are. At any rate, here's my statement." Vulcastrasz turned his head towards me. "_You _shouldn't be here."

"Oh, okay. So, I'm just going to leave you to your sparring." I took a step back when he shook his head.

"No, I mean you shouldn't be _here_, at Wyrmrest." My eye twitched. Oh. "This is our most sacred of spots, and _you_ are here, tainting it with your presence. I do not know why our queen has decided to let you here."

"Because - we - I - not controlled - kill - Deathwing," I stammered.

The other Red rolled her eyes. "Very nice. What do you want with us?"

My brain, moving a kilometer a minute, pulled something up. "Well, could I try sparring?"

For a few moments nobody moved, and then Vulcastrasz chuckled. "All right then. No flying, and not to the death. Try any funny business, and we're on you."

He stepped forward and we began circling each other, the remaining dragons stepping back. With a _shwing_ my tusks unsheathed themselves, making my opponent take a step back. What was I doing? Strong as I was, I was still so young, compared to this Red. But it was too late. And besides, it was just sparring.

Right?

He took the offensive, launching himself at me and trying to bring his full weight down on my body. Instead I jumped to the side and slammed my tail-club into the side of his head... just in time for me to find his own club smacking me in the head. We both stumbled away from the other, heads throbbing. I shook mine, and focused. I couldn't use my fire. It would kill him, and how would that look? Before I could do anything else, my sparring partner reared up, taking a deep breath as a gurgling noise reached my ear-plates. For a moment I thought about raising a barrier, but instead I fell into the twilight realm, transforming into a near-invisible illusion in the real world as the flames passed harmlessly through myself.

I got an idea. Moving my physical self around, looking as if I planned an attack, I moved my twilight self above where I saw Vulcastrasz. With one swift motion I completely sank into the twilight realm, jumped up, and emerged into the physical realm, landing on top of him, effectively teleporting on top of the Red.

My sudden weight flattened him to the snow while I slashed at his back, careful not to go too deep, until with a roar he forced himself to stand, flinging me off. I landed on my back, watching as he wove green energy into himself, the others looking at me in shock at how I had 'teleported'. The wounds I had inflicted began closing, and I wove a spell onto him to stop that. It was the spell I used during the cultist ambush in the Highlands among the metal spires; a violet haze covered the dragon, and all healing he received was absorbed by the spell, to be stored for its final explosion.

With the rate of his healing, the explosion occurred in moments. Vulcastrasz didn't notice how he wasn't healing, and as a result, was rocked by a colossal shadow nova that sent him flying back and gave me the opening to pounce at his exposed stomach.

The Blue, a female, winced. "Ooh, that's gotta hurt."

Just as I was about to sink my claws into him, not fully of course, his tail came up, the club smacking the base of my own tail and forcing me to, instead of clawing him, continue forward and fall off. We both rolled over, standing up. My shadow nova had winded him, leaving my opponent breathing that moment the snow around me exploded, shards of ice raining on my closed eyes. Something wrapped around me, constraining my paws and constricting my body. Giant green, pulsing roots had wrapped around me, and where they touched, a stinging sensation burned within me. Summoning my strength and pouring magic into my claws, I pulled one of my forelegs out of the roots and slashed it through the air in front of me.

The air I had slashed shimmered and opened like a cut, violet energy seeping out of it and covering a large area with twilight essence, including me. The roots shriveled and died around me, and Vulcastrasz stopped himself just before running into it.

Standing in the rift to the twilight realm sent warm shudders through me, reinvigorating my body. For a moment he hesitated, not willing to wade across that to get to me. But the rift slowly closed, and in a few seconds the puddle of twilight faded, allowing him to pounce at me. He pinned me to my back, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't throw him off. Pain flared along my stomach as he clawed, and I panicked.

I reached my magic inside of his body like a mortal hand, felt something within him with the texture of spider webs, grabbed it, and _pulled_.

Vulcastrasz lurched as something came out of him, white strands flowing into me. I didn't feel any different, but when I stopped pulling, he vanished. The others looked at me alarmed, and I had a suspicion as to where he went. I sunk into the twilight realm, to find the Red there, looking around frantically, the violet glow of his life essence surrounding him. Then he saw me. "What did you do to me? WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?" He jumped at me, but I knocked him aside easily with my increased strength.

"I'm not sure. I think I sucked the light out of you, pulling you here."

"Send me back!"

"Soon." I lowered myself to the ground, spreading my wings out for an attack. "But first, let's finish this." Shifting slightly into the physical realm, I informed the others that we were finishing the spar in the twilight realm, to which they all visibly relaxed.

Shadows began to ripple out from me, each one crashing upon Vulcastrasz's hide making him wince and deplete his violet glow just a little. I could actually _see_ how injured he was; I could _see_ him dying.

Feeling what was happening, he took a deep breath and fired a narrow stream of magical flames at me, the red cutting through the gloom of the twilight realm like a hot knife through butter. In response, I fired my own shadow beam, the two spells meeting just infront of my head. Maybe in the physical realm Vulcastrasz could have held me off. Maybe he could have beaten me. But now, I controlled the fight. The clashing point began to head backwards rapidly, my opponent's eyes going from an expression of confidence, to determination, and finally to fear just as I overwhelmed him and my spell crashed into his head, depleting his glow notably. The lightning wasn't fire; it wouldn't cling to his scales.

"I can see how injured you are, literally. I can _see_ you dying. You're not doing so well. Do you want to stop?"

Green light flashed around him, and the magical burns his scales diminished, his glow increasing. "No." With that he jumped at me, my surprise at his refusal sending me on my back as he pinned me once again. Unlike before though, I could easily throw him off, and throw him off I did. Once he landed on the snow with a crack, sending shadows rippling away from him, I released a massive burst of energy outward, the explosion sending him back and further reducing his glow.

In the twilight realm, the only individuals of other flights that could challenge me were the Aspects themselves, but they could destroy me.

I pulled the shadows of the twilight realm around me, increasing my power so that twilight lightning arced in between my horns and wings. I thrust a wing at him, and a bolt came out of the main claw, striking the recovering Vulcastrasz in his forelegs. He collapsed, glow receding. I released another twilight arc, this one catching him in the horns. He groaned, but struggled to rise. At the next volt, his glow diminished further than I had seen before, making him collapse to the snow utterly, breathing shallow. Not wishing to accidentally kill him, I released the built up power back into the environment and stabilized myself, preventing the twilight realm itself from killing him.

"I... yield."

I nodded. "You're good. But you really don't stand a chance here." Drawing the shadows around me again, I turned them towards the Red, whose eyes slitted when they saw black mist heading towards him, but relaxed when they began to heal him, his life-essence strengthening.

When he stood up, he eyed me carefully. "You didn't kill me. I guess that warrants some level of trust."

I smiled. "Well, why would I want to?" I extended my magic and pulled us both back into the physical realm. The others took a few steps back when we appeared out of nowhere.

The other Red came in and examined Vulcastrasz. "Are you okay? You don't look so beaten up."

"The Twilight healed me," he said, motioning towards me with his head as I healed my own cuts.

I rolled my eyes. "The Twilight has a name."

"And what would that be?" the Blue asked.

"Selriona. So, now what?"

She stepped forward, blue scales matching with the ice, a worried expression tugging at her face. "Well, I'd like to try my chances against you, if you don't mind."

I nodded, a smile forming on my face as I got into a battle stance. I _had_ had my age accelerated for a reason.

I was the strongest in my clutch.

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

When I woke up and saw Selriona missing, my first thought wasn't worry. It wasn't panic. It was 'Oh Titans, the Old God is going to say she abandoned me'.

Except, it didn't. Thinking back to the events before I fell asleep, I remembered that Selriona had freed me. I was free. My sanity wouldn't be lost. I wasn't particularly worried about Selriona; the word of the Dragonqueen carries a lot of weight, and she'd not an idiot. She'll be fine.

I soon found myself walking around the ramparts near the middle of Wyrmrest, looking out at the rising sun hidden behind the storm clouds, flashes of lightning occasionally illuminating a tornado that tore up Wintergrasp in the distance. Leaning against the wall that kept me from falling down, I pondered the reason behind the wall first. I came to a conclusion fast; it was needed for the mortals whose visiting numbers, while still low, were much higher than before.

How far we had come. And we still had so far to go. Defeating Deathwing was only one thing that we needed to do. We had to find the rest of our flight, and bring them into the fold. After that, we needed a place to live, and a leader, and so many other things. Maybe we could be like the Netherwing, going to hide in Outland, surviving without an Aspect. As much as I wanted to figure out how to do these things, there were so many variables, so many things that could change, and I could not sort through them for any answer.

I started walking the perimeter, occasionally meeting another dragon, all of whom looked at me waywardly, as if afraid I would kill them any second. I can't blame them. I did my best to look polite, to try and get them to trust me. The wind whipped at my face, blowing scents around. As I walked around the temple, I soon came across an orc.

His face was contorted from strain, eyes slammed shut as green light swirled around his hands. He wore simple, leather clothes, and a shawl over his head. Power radiated from him; this was no mortal to mess with. Even if I hadn't known it was Thrall, I would have known that he was powerful, capable of killing even me in my true form, on his own. Terrifying for a mortal.

I was about to slip by him and leave him to... whatever he was doing, when he lowered his hands, the light of elemental magic fading. He shook his head, looking at me. "They can't hear me. Those that do hear me calm down, but hardly any of the elements are able to hear me." He turned towards me, and narrowed his eyes. Uh oh. Had my queen told him yet? He took a step back. "A twilight dragon? Here?"

I put up my hands. "Wait! Before you blast me to ashes, can I just, explain?"

He relaxed. "Go on," he said gruffly, wary of my presence. Why was _he_ worried? I was the one at _his_ mercy!

"Long story short, Alexstrasza allowed me and the group I lead into Wyrmrest, we're going to help with killing the Destroyer."

"You are, are you? I had assumed your kind were controlled by the Old Gods." He relaxed as he said this.

I shook my head. "No, not controlled. Brainwashed while in our shells into thinking the Reds are corrupt and mortals evil? Oh yeah, definitely."

He raised an eyebrow. "Then, how are you not - "

"Oh, you can thank my mate for that. She figured it out, informed me, one thing led to another, and here we are." I lowered my voice. "You _do_ believe me, right Thrall?"

"No." My heart skipped a beat. "That is not my name. My name... is Go'el. And I do believe you. I judge people on an individual basis. You, I sense no lies in."

I relaxed. "That is... good. What are you doing here?"

"I am trying to calm the elements." He put his hands on the railing. "They are restless. The Destroyer's reign of terror disturbs them, and they can not relax. I tell them to calm down, and they do. But only the ones that hear me. Many have gone deaf to my pleas." He hung his head. "I have failed. The Hour of Twilight could be any day now."

I shook my head. "No, it's not." He turned to look at me. "It's in a month and a half. My mate - sort of - ran the calculations. We have time yet."

Go'el released a breath. "Month and a half... that is still little time. We may not have the opportunity to defeat the Worldbreaker for weeks, despite coming up with the plan tomorrow. No matter what, we will be rushed."

I grimaced, and the shaman continued. "What will you do once this is over?"

I sighed. "I don't know. Too much is uncertain. I'll be happy just to get through all of this _alive, _let alone think of the future. I'm young. I'm five years old."

This made him lurch. "Five years - I forget. Your kind have their aging accelerated."

I nodded. "Dramatically. One year as a whelp instead of fifteen, and the strongest male and female from each group have the century as drakes shortened to two years. I don't exactly have much experience with many things."

"I thought your flight looked down on mortals." After saying that, he pursed his lips, as if he said something that he did not truly believe in.

I laughed, then grew somber. "Oh, no. I grew up around the Bastion of Twilight, watching mortals kill my kind in fair numbers. We acquire a healthy respect for mortal capabilities, very quick. Granted we still hate you, being tricked into thinking you're evil, murderous wretches, but that's beside the point." I looked at him, turning away from the storm. "I unnerve you."

"Are you surprised? All the rest of your kind that I have met have either been trying to kill me, or kill those I care about." I chuckled nervously as he spoke. "But hearing it from your perspective, I can't say I am surprised. It would seem like something the Old Gods would do. Who is in your group?"

The suddenness of the question surprised me, but I answered anyway. "Well, there's my mate, Selriona, Murdonia, my sister, Pallasion, uh, General Vajarn, and the dragonspawn he commands, Sheralion, Turliona, and Cauterlion. There had been more, but _things_ happened. Apparently, Vajarn had once had fifty under his command; by the time we caught up with him, he only had five." I blinked. "So, do you trust me? You believe me, but do you trust me?"

Go'el sighed. "As much as I try to judge people individually, it is hard for prejudices to not seep in. As much as I want to trust you, my experiences tell me not to."

I grimaced "I didn't expect much else. I need to go. There are still some things I need to check on." Like where my mate had gone. "See you when we figure out the battle plan."

He nodded. "Indeed." Then he turned back to the balcony and held out his hands, green light flowing across them again. I walked around the temple, the occasional dragon passing by me, eyes trained on me. At one point I passed Pallasion and Murdonia, both in mortal forms, looking out over Dragonblight silently, the strong scent of fear from Pallasion, no doubt from being so high up. I continued to walk on, and eventually decided to jump. Falling off the side of Wyrmrest, I shifted to my true form, landing with an earth-shaking _thud_.

I found Selriona soon after, sitting with a group of other dragons; a Blue, two Reds, and a Green, talking idly amongst themselves. I noticed that they regarded Selriona coldly. That stung, but I wasn't surprised. She turned around when I approached, smiling warmly, the white scar on her back matching the ice. I sat down on the snow next to her, shivering from the warmth she radiated, no doubt a spell to ward away the cold, slashing winds.

"Nice to see you. Where've you been?"

She chuckled. "Sparring with these four."

The Red female rolled her eyes. "She didn't kill us, which certainly gives her _some_ worth." Then she turned towards me, baring her fangs. "And who might you be?"

"This is my mate, Verthelion, and - " She narrowed her eyes suddenly. "That's not right... Verthelion, follow me!" With that, she vanished from sight, leaving a ripple in the air as the only indicator she was ever there. I followed suit, sinking into the twilight realm, purring mentally as the shadows swam around my scales, strengthening my muscles and increasing my magic stores. The haze rippled and pulsed around us both as our presence ground anything not of our flight.

"What was it?" I asked, turning my head towards her.

"Look." She motioned with her snout towards the north, towards a patch of snow somewhat farther out, covered in a faint violet haze. "Old God Corruption. What's it doing here?"

"I don't know. We'd better check it out." Taking wing, I quickly surrounded myself in a barrier to protect myself from lightning, followed by my mate. It took only a few minutes for us to fly through the kilometers separating us from our goal. Selriona clawed at the snow in the mist's epicenter. Shifting part of myself into the physical realm, I noticed it looked like snow flew by itself. Tunneling into the snow with a mixture of claws and fire, the fog soon intensified. Selriona stuck up her head from the hole she had carved. "There's something below the ice. Help me reach it."

I did. Slowly but surely, we tunneled down, the glow strengthening dramatically. The snow was hard-packed and frozen from centuries of cold, but it stood no chance against our combined amplified strength. Soon enough, the snow gave way to a cavern that we both dropped into, bringing some of the snow with us. The cavern was filled with the haze of the twilight realm, and the snow that fell and hit the bottom levitated briefly, up and down, before melting.

I frowned. "I don't like this. What could possibly be doing this?" I set down on the bottom of the cave, the fog of Old God corruption obscuring my vision of Selriona as she sat next to me, providing the only light.

"I don't know. Let's have a look. On three. One. Two. Three!" At the same time, we both rose out of the twilight realm entirely. I almost immediately wished we hadn't.

Fluids squelched under my claws. We stood on some kind of organic ground, and judging by the burning sensation on my scales, it was corrosive. "Fly! Now!" Using my sense of hearing, I located Selriona's wing beats close to me, but within moments the roar of the thing drowned those out. Then the smell reached my nostrils.

It was putrid and rotten, tainted and decayed. The smell brought to life every horrible memory in my brain, including several I didn't know. I knew what this thing was. A servant of the Old Gods, like Iso'rath. What was it doing here? "We gotta get out of here!" I yelled over the din of the roar.

"Way ahead of you!" A shaft of light burst into the creature, illuminating every horrifying detail; the walls dripping with mucus membranes and digestive enzymes, thick red globules of living blood that seemed to be just waiting for me to land, a ring of razor sharp teeth high above near the 'mouth'. Selriona flew out of the tunnel we had dug to get down here, and I followed after her. I burst out and caught up to her, panting.

"That was close, wasn't it?"

She nodded, gasping for breath. "Yeah, yeah. We need to get to Wyrmrest. We need to tell them what's going on. If there's one of these things, there may be others." We flew full speed towards Wyrmrest, strangely silent and devoid of dragons, reaching it in moments and taking to the top, where the Dragonqueen stood alone. Shifting into our mortal forms, we ran over to her.

"You two. What causes you such haste?"

I stopped, gasping for breath. "Old God servant. North. Tunneling up through the ice. Bad."

My queen's eyes went wide. "Similar to Iso'rath?"

I nodded. "Exactly like Iso'rath."

She nodded, and began walking forward, past us, red sparks swirling about her form as she crossed the otherwise empty top floor, moving to empty space. "I will handle it. It will not be allowed to corrupt these lands." She jumped off Wyrmrest's edge, and seconds later her true form rose up, dwarfing us like we were gnats.

That's when everything went wrong.

The skies turned a blood red, and the wind stopped, as if afraid to blow, as did the lightning. A rumbling, grating, malevolent voice echoed through the air.

"The sun has set on this mortal world, Lifebinder!" Out of nowhere, Deathwing flew down with claws outstretched, attacking the Red Aspect and causing both to fall out of the skies as armor-reinforced claws dug into her flesh. "Make peace with your end, sister, for the Hour of Twilight falls!"

"NO!" Selriona ran out of the tower, entering her true form.

"What are you doing?" I yelled, sprinting after to join her.

Deathwing and Alexstrasza had hit the snow, snapping and breathing flames at each other. Other dragons joined in the fray, but Deathwing knocked them back with arcs of black lightning from his metal-encased flank, one falling with each arc, giving off a last roar of pain before landing on the ground, splattering it with their blood. Selriona raised her barrier in time to deflect one of the strikes, and I imitated her, also defending myself. We swooped in, breathing a stream of fire at the Destroyer. This was all happening too fast! But no time to reflect on that. This Aspect had to _die_.

But it was the other Aspect that died first. Alexstrasza got a bite through and ripped off nearly all of the metal plates on Deathwing's head and a good number of the ones on his neck, exposing black scales with lava flowing over them, small black-gray tentacles poking out of holes in his flesh. He threw back his head, roaring in pain.

"You will regret that dearly, _sister!"_ he spat with such malice, I felt part of myself die just to those words. How do you fight that kind of power? Fast as lightning, Deathwing bent his head in and ripped out the Dragonqueen's throat, and flared out his wings to strike Selriona.

The Lifebinder died in seconds, choking on her own blood, hers joining the sickening pool of the stuff on the ground. Where were the other Aspects? Had they not yet arrived?

A bolt of lightning struck down at Deathwing, making him seize up as electricity arced directly into his flesh, the blast having hit his exposed scales, which I promptly engulfed in twilight fire. Thall - no, Go'el - stood on the top of Wyrmrest, hands weaving as lightning flowed out again, striking the Destroyer yet again with power that no mortal should be able to wield. But it still wasn't enough. A blast of fire came out of his maw, striking the orc where he stood, leaving a ring of flame and blasting him off the tower. "I'll make sure that fall kills this time, _mortal!_" As Go'el fell down, Deathwing brought up a claw, skewering the orc on the tip, his body too small to slide any further. He flicked his claw sideways, the force ripping the orc into two. Looking closely, I saw that the others of our flight were among the dead.

Murdonia, my sister, dead! I'd known her since my hatching! We fought to a stalemate after hatching, we practiced our aim together with Selriona and the others, fought in the Bastion together, and now she was, now she was...

But what came next was much worse. A bolt of arcane energy struck at Deathwing, and he didn't even blink. Repeated blasts of twilight rained down on us from both me and my mate as he slowly walked over towards Selriona, and before she could escape, snapped his head up.

"AAH!"

"Selriona!" He clenched his jaws around her, metal-encased teeth slicing through her, blood exploding out, and he tossed her aside onto a clean patch of snow, the momentum making her roll and leave violet blood stains, her body nearly ripped in two.

My breath caught in my throat as I landed next to her, unwilling to accept what had happened. Selriona, my mate. I... I...

"NOW is the Hour of Twilight!" yelled the Worldbreaker triumphantly, approaching my shaking form. Tears flowed down my eyes as he took a breath, red light burning down in his throat. "Verthelion, come on!" he yelled, making me blink. "I can't hold them off forever! Wake up. WAKE UP!" With that yell, thick, greasy flames flew out at me, washing over my body and -

* * *

><p>Nothing. I laid on my back on a burning fluid, the fleshy ground under me pulsing, my heart pounding in my ears. Indigo flames lit up the otherwise absolute darkness as Selriona breathed flames over globules of living blood, clawing through some and scattering their fluid across the area. "Verthelion, please! We have to get out! Snap out of it!"<p>

I was up in moments. "Wha - what?"

"Thank the Titans! Follow me, we need to get out!" I groaned as I flapped my wings, my left one burning from where it had pressed into the fluid. How was this possible? Selriona was dead! I saw her entrails after Deathwing chomped on her like she was a stag! For a moment I tried fading into the twilight realm, but a force like a mace seemed to slam on my snout, interrupting me.

A beam of light cut through the creature as my mate punched through the ice, opening the way for escape. In moments, we had flown out, leaving the angry roars of the Old God servant behind, and wasted no time in refilling the hole with the snow we had dug out. Once the hole was filled and we were safely in the twilight realm, I tackled her, nuzzling her head. "I thought you died! I was so scared, and you were dead, and your blood came out so fast and, and, and..."

"What has gotten into you?" she asked, but nonetheless put her claws around me in the 'hug' motion mortals had, purring reassuringly to me.

"Deathwing killed you, he killed everyone, and, and..."

"Verthelion, none of that happened. We faded into the physical realm, and you just, just passed out! I heard you collapse on the ground, and damn it, it was so hard to keep those damned blood things away when the only light is my fire. We must've been there for _hours_." She nuzzled against me, purring again. "I think that thing gave you a nightmare. I don't know what that thing showed you, but it _was not real_. Please, calm down. I'm all right."

I got off of her, terror still clenching at my heart from the vision. It had seemed so real! "Okay. Okay. I just... I thought I'd lost you again." I wiped away a drop of water from my face with a foreleg, and took a deep breath. "We... we need to head back to Wyrmrest. We need to tell them what happened here." Looking up, I saw that it was very dark, night time. How long had we been in there?

Now that I had the relative peace of mind to look, my mate was in terrible shape. What looked like burns covered her scales, and in some places they were corroded. Her capacitor was completely drained, violet/silver tendrils branching out around it. "Like I said, _hours_."

I shuddered. "It felt like minutes... we need to get back to Wyrmrest. The others will be looking for us." I turned a quivering smile to her. "Race you?"

She grinned, despite her obvious fatigue from defending me. How many times had she saved my life now? "Oh, you know it." Before I could blink, she had launched herself into the air. Grinning, I followed suit. It was all right. Selriona was alive. She hadn't been killed. It had all been a lie. Everything, was going to be just, _fine_.

We reached Wymrest in minutes, and I boggled at how different it was from my dream, viewing it through my illusion in the physical realm. Dragons of the four remaining flights flew around everywhere, as did drakes. Drakonids guarded the entrances, and I could smell powerful things; intense Green flight poison, like at Seradane, but much more concentrated. The smell of ozone and the arcane, permeating the air around me. As we slipped into Wyrmrest in mortal forms, I also picked up the smell of a desert, of sand.

Nine mortals stood in a 'U' shape, like a cup we were falling into. At the apex stood Alexstrasza in the elven form I had seen her in in my nightmare, her aura of serenity not diminished in the least by this form.

To her left stood a night elf in green armor, green cloak trailing behind her. Her eyes shimmered so many colors, they were like a rainbow, and it hurt to look into them, so I instead looked at her horns.

My almost-killer, Ysera.

To the Green Aspect's left stood a high elf without a shirt, exposing numerous tattoos of dragons. His hair was long, and sand filled the shoulder-piece on his right shoulder, and his clothing seemed to be made of some substance not yet invented. His eyes glowed blue, and he simply stood, perfectly relaxed, like the end of the world was not for a long, long time to come.

The Timeless one, Nozdormu, and to his right, Sheralion and Turliona in their mortal forms, sticking out like sore claws.

Over on Alexstrasza's immediate right was a human with blue hair and similar robes and glowing eyes, but on closer inspection his ears were slightly pointed, indicating he was a half-elf. Of course, I knew much better than that. The stench of ozone radiated from him, arcane energy zipping about in one of the gems adorning his robes, the power in that simple gem putting my own to shame.

Without a doubt, Kalecgos, new Aspect of the Blue dragonflight.

To his right was Go'el, followed by Pallasion and Murdonia. I didn't need to ask where Cauterlion was. His absence said enough.

My sister looked at me when we approached, falling 'in line' next to her. "Where were you?"

I shook my head. "That's not important." I stepped out to look at Alexstrasza, kneeling as I did so. "My queen, there is a problem up north."

"Rise." I did. "What sort of problem?" Her mouth frowned, whether out of worry or disappointment, I don't know.

"There is a monstrosity to the north tunneling upward out of the ice. It is a servant of the Old Gods, similar to Iso'rath in the Twilight Highlands. We were trapped inside it a few hours before we managed to escape."

Alexstrasza grimaced, an unfitting look for her. "This is grave news indeed. Where one follows, there may be many more. The Liberality Confederacy is due to arrive in mere moments. We will discuss this with them when it is time."

I nodded. "Of course," I said, stepping back to my place.

A few minutes later, a swirling portal opened in the middle of Wyrmrest, and looking through it, I saw that it led to Orgrimmar. Out of it stepped twenty-five mortals, of all races, both Horde and Alliance, dressed in elegant armor and robes with fierce looking weapons, and all around looking very powerful, and with the creases around the eyes of the ones that were not undead, very tired. A night elf female clad in armor stepped forward, curtseying to Go'el, then each of the Aspects in turn, ending with Alexstrasza.

"Dragonqueen."

"Turaniles, welcome to Wyrmrest temple. You are already familiar with where to go. You and your guild may retire for the night. Tomorrow, first thing, we discuss the method for defeating Deathwing."

Turaniles nodded. "Thank you, Lifebinder." She turned around to the others. "Okay, follow me." She waved her hand toward herself, and the mortals left as quickly as they arrived. Selriona looked shaken, and she spoke next.

"I'm... going to rest as well. Tomorrow we'll need to be well rested." She turned to leave after curtseying, and I followed her to the room we were given, where she curled up on the bed she was given, pulling the Wyrmrest-embroidered blankets around her into a nest, shivering.

Laying in my own makeshift nest, I sighed. "What's wrong?"

"I've had a... little bit of an issue with one of the Kingslayers. I'm not looking forward to meeting her again. If I never see her again in my life, it will be too soon."

"Relax. Whoever they are, she won't attack you. This is a sanctuary, remember? And besides, you're an adult now. You met her, when?"

"When I was coming to find you."

"So when you were a drake. You're much more powerful now. You can probably hold your own against her."

"And if the others jump in?"

"Then you can escape to the twilight realm in the blink of an eye. You're _fine_. Now, get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow." How odd. Not an hour ago, she was comforting me from the nightmare. I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep. They were here. Tomorrow, we would concoct a plan to kill Deathwing with. The event itself was so close, I could practically touch it with my claws. But what was to stop the event from my nightmare from happening? What if Deathwing killed me, or Selriona? What would happen? I shook my head. We needed to do this. Against somebody as powerful as the Black Aspect, every trick was needed, and the twilight realm was a powerful force to use.

Yeah, this is the finish line. Just hope I live to cross it.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	42. Chapter 42:Serious

**Dis****claimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks like always to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

All in all, there were at least three of the creatures that Verthelion and I had been trapped in. We'd figured this out by all three of us - Pallasion, Verthelion and I that is - flying (Pallasion running) around the vicinity of Wyrmrest while we waited for the mortals to awaken. There was one near Galakrond's rest, which we had been trapped in, another near the Emerald Dragonshrine, and a final one between the Azure and Ruby shrines, all below the ice, but all no doubt burrowing upwards post haste to do whatever maliciousness they had in store. As I returned to the Temple, the sun began to brighten up the stormy skies, letting me see clearly that the ice occasionally exploded upwards in spikes as the element of water became more destructive. Time was running out, and we still had a month and a half or so to go. How bad would it get if we didn't stop it?

I walked around the bottom floor of Wyrmrest, pacing back and forth across the room voluminous room in my human form, hands behind my back. Nalestrasza hadn't given me any help during my dream; she said that she could not predict what plan the others would come up with, but she had her own plan developed. When I asked her what plan she'd come up with, she just said that it was far too complex for me to possibly remember, let alone relay.

The sound of footsteps clanking along the metal floor reached me long before the dwarven smell did. I looked up as they got closer, meeting Rom's eyes, Thori'dal absent from his person, his armor off and replaced with more casual clothing; a tabard with the symbol of his guild over a blue linen shirt and expensive netherweave pants. He smiled, making me notice the burn along his left cheek that wasn't there before. I didn't need to ask. He'd been fighting in the Firelands, after all, after helping me survive the Infinite. "Long time, no see."

"It's only been a few months, Rom," I said, stopping my pacing to lean against a wall, my violet robes tightening around one knee as I brought it up, making a sort of triangle with one leg.

He scoffed. "Maybe that's not a long time ta you, but ta us 'mortals?' It's a fair bit o' time. What're you doing here in Wyrmrest, and more importantly, how did you convince them to not, eh, ya know? Kill ya?"

I chuckled. "Well, Verthelion struck a deal with our queen. We've allied with the Red flight, our little group."

He raised an eyebrow. "Group? How many of ye are there? I mean, I didn't get a good look when we came in."

"Well, let's see." I held up a hand and began counting. "There's me, Verthelion, Pallasion, Murdonia, Turliona, Sheralion, and Vajarn."

He jumped. "VAJARN? As in, General Vajarn?

"Yes, you know him?" I worried for a moment. Had he fought the general's forces at one point? But that seemed impossible; they said nobody caught them.

He shook his head. "Ah, no, I don't. But Mariel did mention him."

I laughed, remembering the warlock's antics. "Did he now? What else did he tell you about?"

"Well, he told me _all_ about how this is going to end for Verthelion's group. It's kinda infuriating, though. I want to tell ya so badly about what's going to happen, but ah know that I can't."

"Really? Did he tell you about your fate?"

"Oh no, he didn't know that. Apparently I'm dead long before he meets meh."

"Well, to be honest, I'm not surprised." I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. "I mean, Mariel was either about to become or just barely an adult three centuries in the future. What would that make him now?"

Rom scratched his head. "Well, let's see... um, not existing. Not surprising I die before he knows about me."

I pulled myself from the wall and walked over to him. "Did you tell the others about, you know, us?"

He shook his head. "To most, not a word. Ellemayne, on the other hand, I explained to her."

I raised an eyebrow at the mention of the kaldorei. "Ellemayne?"

"Yes. Ya see, her future self told me about how she ran into you in Hyjal, and after we forced Aeonus to retreat and I met up with the others after their battle, she chewed me out for missin' it and asked why I wasn't there, so I told her about the Infinite. You shoulda _seen_ 'er when I mentioned them, it was like I had the Lich King behind me." He chuckled. "She asked questions, I answered them, one thing led to another, and I'm making her swear not to tell anyone of what I told her. She doesn't know how it'll end, I didn't tell her that."

I relaxed. "Oh. So she does know about me? How I'm not, you know, murderous?"

He nodded. "Oh, she knows."

I cracked my knuckles, relieving some built up tension. "What are you doing up so early?"

"Woke up from a nightmare. Couldna get back ta sleep. And ya?"

"I don't need _nearly_ as much sleep as you. Why haven't I seen the others of your guild that aren't, ahem, living?" I asked, remembering the handful of Forsaken I had seen, and the human and orc who had glowing blue eyes and deathly pale skin.

He rolled his eyes. "Don't mention that around them. Touchy subject. They're in da alcoves."

I gulped, getting ready for my next question. "How's Kolkna been behaving?" I choked out.

"She was a downright monster when we assaulted the Firelands. She made sure to make anything she could suffer. She's a sadist on her own, but ancestors! Ya shoulda seen 'er. After she took out her aggressions on da Firelord, she calmed down a lot, though."

"That reminds me, what was the delay? The Lifebinder told me that you'd been caught up in something involving the cult. Spill."

"We found their major outpost, their base o' operations. It was just too much of an opportunity to pass up." He smiled, probably remembering some slaughter or another.

I just raised an eyebrow. "I thought that the Bastion of Twilight was the major outpost for the Hammer?"

He scoffed. "And ya think that just because we destroyed that, that automatically means they wouldn't set up a new base?"

I pressed my lips together. "Hmm, good point."

We continued talking back and forth for a while, discussing minor things such as history, and major things like how I knew how long we had until the Hour of Twilight and he didn't. Soon enough, an eye floated around the corner of the room. Just an eye.

It was a curious thing, floating towards us, a green ball of light with a slit pupil and green mist trailing behind it. It floated up to Rom, who stared back at the eye the size of his head, and sighed. "I'm comin, I'm comin!" He waved a palm through the thing, which dissolved into green mist. He looked towards me, and nodded. "It's time."

A shudder went through my entire being. "I'll go inform the others." With that, we both turned off; Rom back towards his guild, me towards the others in my mate's group.

* * *

><p><span>General Vajarn<span>

General Bogag and I continued to channel our respective powers onto the final dagger, which was covered in the same seeping twilight essence the others were. We had been infusing them almost non-stop, pausing only for a quick sleep and to nourish ourselves. Our magic was stretched to its limits, but the end was in sight. The daggers were part of my back-up plan to defeat Deathwing in case the plan I had already concocted did not work. I couldn't tell anyone my plan besides the Blue and Turliona, when the time came.

Because there was still someone among us allied with Deathwing.

I didn't know who, I couldn't think of anyway to find out who it was, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone among us still was, hopefully not Turliona. After much thinking and going over my memories, I noticed something off about Feraliona, a lack of focus in her eyes that most would not even notice. She could not have been doing that of her own will. Somebody controlled her, most likely with obedience runes, which are notoriously hard to detect. I would not allow those in my fractured unit to attend the meeting with the Aspects, in case one of them was the traitor, and I had little to no say among the dragons' attending. But I had to minimize the chances of somebody figuring out the plan, and going to the Aspects and telling them one of us was still allied with Deathwing would just spark a whole rail of controversy we simply _did not have time for._

Finally, just as my last scraps of mana were about to run out, I felt a backwash of power begin to build up as we tried to place more power on the dagger than it would hold. I stopped channeling, and picked it up from the table when Bogag also stopped. I ran my human form's hand along the hilt, twilight fire filling my sight.

"It's done," I said. "It's finally done." I bowed to him. "Thank you for your assistance."

"It was nothing." He took a deep breath, watching me as I gathered the daggers in my hands, careful to not burn myself on the corrupted flames surrounding them. The flames were so dense they could hurt even one of our own flight. That was saying something.

I left the Blue dragonspawn behind and headed to my alcove, setting the daggers down on a metal table, and then sending them into the twilight realm to prevent any of the other flights from stumbling on them and jumping to conclusions. Not a moment too soon, as Sheralion and Turliona, in their true forms, appeared in the doorway. Sheralion spoke.

"General, it is time for the discussing of strategy."

I nodded to him. "Thank you. I will go right away. You two, stay down here. Turliona, once I return I must speak to you privately."

"Understood, General."

I walked out, and headed up the stairs to the second floor, where I found Selriona, Verthelion, Murdonia and Pallasion waiting for me. Verthelion spoke first. "Okay, good. We're all here then. You three go on ahead. Vajarn, I'll carry you to the top. There aren't stairs there."

Looking around, I saw his statement was true. "Alright," I said. The others began to depart, Murdonia speaking encouraging words to Pallasion so that he wouldn't collapse from fright on the flight up. Selriona gave her mate a warm smile, then ran outside to shift to her true form. I walked with Verthelion to the same place, a ring of balconies halfway up, a nauseating height. Dragonspawn can't fly, but we're very good at _falling_. Verthelion jumped down off the ledge, and his true form rose up moments later, claws reaching out to grab me. I took deep breaths as the icy, wind-carved landscape of Dragonblight revealed itself to me, and then relaxed when my feet found solid ground. Gathered around a central, floating globe representing Azeroth were the Aspects, and this was the first time I had seen the ones of the Blue, Green and Bronze flights.

It was now or never.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

The Aspects were already assembled when we arrived at the apex of Wyrmrest Temple, gazing at the sphere of Azeroth. It looked so small from this vantage point. We stood a fair ways off from them, and when the Kingslayers and Go'el flew up in a massive gust of controlled wind, they stood so that Aspects, mortals and Twilights made a triangle around Azeroth. The Kingslayers all had their weapons and armor, as if they expected an ambush, an attack, or perhaps just to be ready to go and defeat what they had to post haste. Time to be serious; this is _serious._

I recognized Rom, now dressed in his gleaming mail armor that seemed to reflect flames that did not exist, Thori'dal across his back. He looked towards me, and smiled, winking.

Turning my head, I noticed Ellemayne's past self, looking so different, with a bow on her back, occasionally venting steam, with colors alarmingly similar to those of Wyrmrest. She either didn't notice me, remember me, or pretended not to.

Frizzle was the next who caught my eye. The gnome wore much more elaborate robes than before, and arcane winds seemed to flow around her. Her stature did not detract from the aura of danger around her; she _did_ help Kolkna chain me.

Aruen, the male Draenei who helped Kolkna track me across the Eastern Kingdoms, wore glowing golden armor and held a libram in one hand, a small, jeweled mace strapped to his back that glowed like the sun.

A human male, a mage by the looks of his robes, looked simply horrid. He had bags under his eyes, white streaks through otherwise brown hair, wrinkles on his skin despite being young, and his bones showed through his skin where robes did not cover him. In his hands he cradled a staff of incredible design; blue metal, and the staff head had horns, a glowing eye where the head met the staff itself, and a crystal radiating blue magic at the tip. He stroked the staff like it were sentient, and he smelled alarmingly like a Blue.

Before I could look at any others, I saw Kolkna. Her giant, glowing sword was at her feet, and she still had the same golden gray-green armor from the last time I had seen her. Her face didn't have the set scowl I had been used to; she actually had a smile that was not out of malice.

Alexstrasza cleared her throat. "We are gathered here to discuss matters of the utmost importance. The Hour of Twilight is fast approaching, and the only surefire way to prevent it is to end Neltharion. This is no easy task. His power has been growing ever since he battled me at Grim Batol, and is nigh-unstoppable now. We must form an intricate plan if we are to prevail and stop the end of all life from falling upon us. Our allies, renegades of the Twilight dragonflight," Nearly all the eyes of the Kingslayers snapped to us at these words, hands reaching for weapons, then stopping, remembering where they were. " - have agreed to join us in the battle, and no doubt have valuable information to end the Worldbreaker's reign of terror."

Kalecgos spoke. "My queen, are you certain we can trust them? The Twilight flight, in the past, has done nothing but attempt to usher in the very event that we are attempting to prevent."

I winced as Verthelion spoke up. "We've seen through the illusion pulled over our minds. The Hour of Twilight would end our own lives as well; it is in our mutual benefit to ally."

Turaniles, apparently the leader of the Kingslayers, stepped forward, her sword crackling with lightning at her back. "We can worry about trust another time. What matters here and now is figuring out how to _end_ the Black dragonflight's last surviving member." Did one of the Kingslayers shuffle at 'last'? Did they know something Turaniles didn't? "Let's start by compiling everything that we know. Deathwing's strengths, weaknesses, things we can use against him, things that might interfere, whatever we have. Ignoring the obvious, that he is _very_ powerful, he seems to radiate flame. When I had seen him in the Twilight Highlands, being in his presence felt like I was in close proximity to a massive flame, but the last time I observed him, gouts of fire spilled out from him in all directions."

I nodded. "I can confirm that. Another thing that might be of note are the three servants of the Old Gods tunneling up through the ice in proximity to Wyrmrest. They're like Iso'rath, and are getting higher. What they want is beyond me, but not doubt their emergence would be a massive hindrance. I say we have a few days, say, a week and a half. They weren't expecting us to find them obviously."

Kolkna took the momentum of speech, clearly not recognizing my voice (Thank the Titans!). "One vital thing is that his blood has the property of preventing life from growing for _ten thousand years _wherever it falls. This sort of anti-life zone should definitely be in a non important place. In essence, we do not fight him in a notable place, like Hyjal, where such corruption would be devastating."

Vajarn sighed. "One vital thing are the elementium plates protecting him from attack. You know how they protect him, but I _saw_ how they were made. It is clear that to defeat him, the armor _must_ be removed, but that is not as simple as you would think. Each individual plate of any notable size is, in actuality, many smaller plates put together seamlessly. They are attached in such a way that, when attacked, they behave as one solid piece of armor and absorb the blow. But when you try to remove them, you can only remove one of the small sub-plates. Strong in defense, and difficult to remove, and they aren't conductive of electricity either."

He took a breath, and then continued. "There is also the timing of the Hour of Twilight. We have approximately a month and a half before it falls, and during said time period, the storms and such will continue to get worse, increasing exponentially on the last day, culminating in the Hour of Twilight itself, as the elements absorb all life back into themselves."

Verthelion took a deep breath. "And... there is the matter of Neltharion." Alexstrasza's eyes lit up even more at the mention of the Black Aspect's true name. "Within the twilight realm, bound to Deathwing's physical location, is a chained wyrm that can _only_ be Neltharion himself. However, even if the chains were to be shattered, I don't know how much he could help." He rubbed his temples. "That's all I know."

Kalecgos put his hand to the chin, and Go'el closed his eyes, clearly deep in thought. I began to think, taking in the information, trying to come up with a plan. The human mage who smelled like a Blue spoke up. "Well, okay. Here's an idea. We need a powerful weapon to defeat him, right? The most powerful weapon ever created is in pieces, but if we go back and retrieve the Dragon Soul - " Before he could continue Nozdormu's head snapped around so fast I'm certain it nearly broke the sound barrier, delivering a glare that could make Titans cringe. " - or not."

Vajarn stepped forward, placing his hands on the model Azeroth and pushing it down, so everyone could clearly so Northrend. "All right. _Here _is the plan. The first thing to know is, once Deathwing has arrived at our chosen destination, how we will defeat him. Neltharion, within the twilight realm, is very likely to have no power. The Black Aspect did not magically split into two entities when our flight was created, and any mental powers he would have are inconsequential in all likeliness. Freeing him would be a gamble, one that we can not afford to take." He spread his hands over the globe, snapping into Strategist Mode, his eyes going hard. "The flames Deathwing radiates can be offset with cold. Kalecgos," He pointed to the Aspect in question. "Can create an aura of frost around us, which would easily mitigate any flames. The next thing to do is to stun him. Magical bonds would have to work, since no physical bond is powerful enough. Those who can perform magic will hide within the twilight realm, and when the time comes, Selriona," This time pointing to me. "Will force us out to take Deathwing by surprise."

He took a breath, and continued, nobody stopping him. He was on a _roll_. "He will not expect such a thing, and will be stunned. After this, those without magic will be able to tear off his plates, after which his own instability will destroy him. The three servants of the Old Gods burrowing near Wyrmrest can wait; their deaths will not prevent the Hour of Twilight, Deathwing's will, and where I plan for us to fight him, they won't be able to interfere. Any questions?"

Turaniles came forward. "Isn't the twilight realm _harmful_ to us?"

Vajarn shook his head. "Only if we wish it to be."

"All right then, next question: how do you know he will not be expecting this?"

"Because those who will not be subduing him will be in the physical realm with Alexstrasza and Kalecgos. You will speak to him, engage him in a brief conversation, and while he is busy telling you how you will not redeem him and all that, the trap is sprung. With the power of the most powerful mortals in the world, four Aspects, three dragons and dragonspawn, he will not be able to fight back."

One of this Kingslayers, a blood elf female with two massive, glowing-green warglaives on her back, snickered. "Chatty villains."

It was honestly somewhat alarming to see Vajarn take charge like that, rattling off a plan in seconds. Even more so, the way he referred to the Aspects as simple strategic elements, not the leaders of entire flights. He knew what to do, and he did it. He knew who could help with what, and did so. "Kalecgos's frost aura will have a second benefit beyond suppressing the Destroyer's flames. Thermal shock. The metal plates on Deathwing are clearly subjected to intense heat constantly. Even if elementium is capable of withstanding that much, it will still be _hot_. The cold of his aura will conflict with the elementium, making it much more brittle and easy to remove. So in review, we lure Deathwing in, Alexstrasza engages him in a conversation, and while he is distracted we exit the twilight realm and subdue him. Kalecgos is in the physical realm, using an aura of cold to A: Prevent us from being charbroiled and B: To apply thermal shock onto his plates so that they can be pried up. Again, any questions?"

Ellemayne grimaced. "This plan is suicidal _at best_, and leaves out something very, very important. What is to keep others from aiding Deathwing, such as _your_ flight? Furthermore, how do you plan for us to pry off any notable plates? Just, what, _walk_ right up his searing hot armor plating to his back? What if he has a defensive spell active _before_ the trap is sprung?"

Vajarn hesitated for just a moment, but continued within a second, turning his hard militaristic glare towards the night elf. "His flames will keep anybody from accompanying him before he enters the frost aura. They will not be able to get anywhere near him. As to your concern about his armor plates, the process is, granted, not going to be pleasant. His blood _will_ spill before he dies, and the plates are going to be hot. Grappling hooks of sufficient strength do not realistically exist, so the only practical method is to climb onto him and pry up the sub-plates one by one manually, using weapons for leverage. The flames will be diminished by the frost aura, but a healer may still need to accompany you during this task, preferably one that does not know much in the way of stunning spells."

One of the Kingslayers, a Forsaken with a black cross on his face and priest robes, stepped forward. "I will go. I know absolutely nothing about such magic, and I can keep them sustained with magical wards to prevent injury in the first place."

Vajarn nodded. "Good. Now," he turned back to Ellemayne. "Ellemayne, is it?" She nodded. "You raise a valid concern about his Shadowflame Barrier, which is the protection method he uses while flying around Azeroth. It absorbs damage, regenerates its integrity quickly, and whenever it is struck a massive explosion of shadowflame washes outward. However, you'll see that the location we will fight him in will make that inconsequential."

Ellemayne nodded. "I... understand," she said hesitantly, clearly holding major reservation about trusting a Twilight dragonspawn.

"Wait a moment!" I said, stepping in to the conversation. "Vajarn, why can we not simply draw him into the twilight realm and defeat him there?"

"For two reasons. One; Neltharion is in the exact same spot in the twilight realm that Deathwing is in the physical one. Drawing him in there may cause some very nasty complications. Second, if you want to pull the single most powerful dragon on Azeroth into the twilight realm _by force_, be my guest." I clenched my mouth, nodding, and leaving his discussion as quickly as I entered. I felt annoyance flare in my chest. A dragonspawn, being sarcastic to - !

"All right. That's the How. The next thing to determine is the Where. Location is key to defeating Deathwing." He turned the globe of Azeroth over so that instead of the pole, the Maelstrom showed up to all. "The Maelstrom's rift to Deepholm is largely mended. The elemental plane of earth is once again separate from Azeroth. _However_, Deathwing tore through the barrier once before, he can no doubt do it again, having gained power from whatever source. If he reaches Deepholme, then it is _over_. There are many places to hide, and as the former Aspect of the Earth, it is no accident he hid there the first time. It will heal him. I know; I've seen this myself."

He took a breath, licking his human lips to rehydrate them. "Which is why _we_ must choose the battlefield. Once the Worldbreaker sees what is going on, he will do everything he can to escape. I am not counting on him to escape, but if he does, it will likely be after some plates are removed. He will begin falling apart, slowly, but surely. So he will abandon his reign of terror temporarily to flee towards Deepholm. In order to counteract this, we must fight him as far away from the Maelstrom as possible."

Ysera nodded reluctantly. "He speaks the truth. Like he said, it is no accident he hid in Deepholm. Should he attempt to escape, what are your plans to stop him? He is empowered; he will fly faster than us."

"I'm getting to that," he said briefly. He turned the globe three times; once to the Eastern Kingdoms, then Kalimdor, and lastly Northrend. "Those are the three possible locations to fight him. Silithus, Stranglethorn Vale, and Northrend are the primary locations, the three farthest places from the Maelstrom still over land. Silithus has not yet fully recovered from C'thun's rise. The remains of Old God corruption there make it a poor choice for subduing Deathwing." He turned it to Stranglethorn Vale, everyone looking at him in silence. Nobody spoke, hardly anyone seemed to breathe. We were all enraptured by his strategy and the way he rattled it off seemingly effortlessly.

"Stranglethorn Vale is too cluttered. Too many trees, and even if we were to knock some down, the method of luring Deathwing there would not work amongst such a high concentration of life. Which leaves Northrend." He turned the model of Azeroth so that Northrend was shown to all in all its glory. "There are two possible locations in Northrend. The one furthest from the Maelstrom is the location known as the Storm Peaks, however there is a better alternative." He tapped a location with a finger. "Icecrown glacier. With the Scourge defeated and braindead, they pose no threat. It is far from the Maelstrom, and is perfect for drawing Deathwing there. The conditions of Icecrown will make Deathwing's Shadowflame barrier useless."

He laced his hands together and cracked them. "All right then. In the Twilight Highlands, our queen drew the Destroyer to her by creating a Circle of Life. Being the enemy of all life, of course the Destroyer would be attracted to it. That is how we will bring him to us again. We do not know where his location or direction is; we can not bring the fight to him, so we will make him bring the fight to us. No matter where he is, no matter what he is doing elsewhere, a ring of life created by the Lifebinder in the middle of Icecrown, the place with the least life in all of Azeroth, will be like a shining beacon in the middle of the night." He placed a finger on the globe, and traced it up towards Northrend. "He will be drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and even though is would leave Wyrmrest and the surrounding regions unguarded, he will not truly win until the Aspects are dead, which he will attempt to do first, rather than risk destroying a sacred location and further increase determination against him. He will approach, and then we will spring the trap. So we set up in Icecrown, Alexstrasza creates a circle of life, and we wait for Deathwing to inevitably show up."

The Lifebinder spoke up. "The last time I did that, he told me he is not at my beck and call."

Vajarn shook his head. "In that, he is wrong. However much he will try to resist it, the fact is that it is simply too engrained in his nature as Aspect of Death to ignore it. It's not that he won't be able to mentally resist; he will be unable to _physically_ resist, similar to a powerful substance addiction. Not to mention he will know where you, and as a result, the other Aspects are. Destroying Wyrmrest would not automatically grant him victory, but killing _you_ may as well. Buildings do not stop the Hour of Twilight, Aspects do, so he will focus on where you create the circle."

Most everyone had a hand on their chin, thinking over all that Vajarn had said. It was Go'el that spoke first. "Yes... it could work. It may very well work. His flames are unlikely to be diminished entirely, they would help against the chill of Icecrown, working against him. I can see no flaws in this plan, nor think of a better one. Just one thing. You said you were going to explain what to do if he should escape and retreat to the Maelstrom?"

"Ah yes, thank you. For the past two days, I and a member of the Blue flight have been preparing items that would stop Deathwing's flight." He looked our way, and a fierce mental battle seemed to rage in his eyes for a few seconds. Finally, he turned back and continued to speak. "One of the dragonspawn under my command will use the items, which are knives infused with twilight energy, against Deathwing. One of the metal plates must be torn off from a wing joint, that is paramount. She will hurl the knives into the hole left, imbedding them into his flesh. As powerful as Deathwing is, he does not have the means to remove twilight fire from himself, so the spot hit will be start degrading. Should Deathwing try to escape, he will be forced to slow down and eventually, crash. If he crashes into the ocean, he will drown. If he does not, we are able to track him by his trail of corruption, and put an end to him wherever he falls. Hopefully, though, it will not come to that."

Kalecgos sighed. "Is that all?"

"That is all," said Vajarn, stepping back to our group, rubbing his throat.

For a moment, everyone was silent, before Alexstrasza spoke, her voice hopeful and at the same time melancholy, no doubt from the notion of having to kill Neltharion. "The plan is sound. We must begin preparations to carry it out post haste. We will meet at the gate Corp'rethar to finish Deathwing."

Verthelion nodded, then bowed to the Aspects. "I understand. We will go prepare." We turned around, flying down Wymrest with Vajarn in Verthelion's claws, Pallasion's eyes screwed shut the whole way down. Upon landing, we walked around the alcove ring a little, before finding Turliona and Sheralion in their true forms. Vajarn spoke up.

"Turliona, I need to speak with you. Come to my alcove."

She nodded obediently. "Of course, General." As she turned to leave, the look on Sheralion's face could only be described as worried.

"So they've come up with a plan, then?" he asked.

Murdonia nodded. "Yes, we have. We're going to carry it out as soon as possible. Those who are going are going to Icecrown."

"So it's really happening then. Deathwing is going to die," he whispered.

"Yes. Hope we win," I told him.

"Yeah," he said, as I turned around to head for my alcove. "Yeah, I hope that we do," he said in a depressed tone as I turned away.

* * *

><p><span>Turliona<span>

I obediently followed my General into the alcove assigned to him by the Red, Demestrasz, wondering what he needed me for. Something about the daggers he had asked for two days ago, no doubt. Once we reached our destination, he released his mortal illusion, and placed a clawed hand on the back of my cowl, pulling me with him into the twilight realm. Once there, I noticed my knives on the table, coated in burning twilight flame so potent it made me cautious to be even close to them.

"General, what do you need me for?"

He scooped up the daggers, holding them cautiously by their hilts with a web of twilight energy, handing them to me. "You will accompany us to Icecrown in order to defeat Deathwing." My heart soared. I was being called upon to help kill an Aspect! "We will go there and Selriona will pull us, and most others, into the twilight realm. When she releases us, we will take Deathwing, who Alexstrasza will lure there, by surprise and stun him with magical bonds while others rip his plates off. Your job is that of the back up; I will magically pull off one of the plates at his wing joint, and it will be your job to quickly hurl every single one of your daggers into the wound so that they imbed as deeply as possible."

"What will they do?"

"The twilight energy will slowly cripple the Destroyer's wing. Should he escape, he will most likely flee to Deepholm. This will keep him from reaching his destination. I hope it doesn't come to that, but you never know."

I manipulated my magic, using illusory magic to give myself several pockets to place the daggers in safely. "Understood, General. I won't fail you."

He put a hand on my shoulder, smiling. "I know you won't. You never have before."

I nodded, and pulled myself out of the twilight realm. I decided not to expend any more of my magic; I'd be needing every drop I had for the task ahead. I sprinted back to my alcove, and walked in to see Sheralion pacing nervously, hands wringing each other, his fangs gritting nervously. "Sheralion."

When he looked up, his face softened immediately, and he smiled. "What did he want?"

"He gave me my daggers back. I'm going to help kill Deathwing." I reached out and held his hands.

"Amazing! Did he tell you what I'm going to be doing?"

I shook my head, and he deflated. "No, he didn't. I'm guessing that you're staying here."

"Oh. Well, what are you going to be doing? I mean, what's the plan to kill him?"

"From what I gathered, we're going to Icecrown. We'll be hidden in the twilight realm while Alexstrasza gets Deathwing to go there, and while he's distracted, we pop out, subdue him, and others rip off his plates while we keep him stunned."

His eye twitched slightly, then looked over to his sword on the wall. "That's a great plan,' he said in a melancholy voice, letting go of my hands. He touched the hilt of his sword, and then let it go, his tone brightening. "You should go to sleep. Right now. You have a big day ahead of you, and I have to speak with, uh, Verthelion. Alone." He looked sad, like he was fighting something in him, and then smiled.

"Of course. I'll see you tomorrow." I shifted to my mortal form, placed my daggers on a table, and laid in the bed, while Sheralion walked away. Once I had told him the plan, he had become colder, hesitant, like he had to do something he didn't want to. I decided not to dwell on my mate's unusual behavior; it wasn't my place to question things. I closed my eyes, daggers beside me on a table, blades anxious to taste the Destroyer's blood.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	43. Chapter 43:Unsuccessful

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for being my beta.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

The flight to Icecrown went without incident. The human who smelled like a Blue ran their hand along the staff outside of Wyrmrest, letting azure magic flow around them until in his spot stood a female Blue with Pallasion's wing-extensions and ornate jewelry along her horns. When I questioned, I was told that the blue dragon Tarecgosa's soul resided in the staff, and that the human could transform into her visage.

Okay then. Why not?

He flattened himrself to the ground to allow the rest of the mortals to climb onto his back in order to fly them. I held Turliona in my claws, Verthelion held Vajarn. Murdonia stayed back in Wyrmrest, lacking the magic to chain Deathwing, and Vajarn had Sheralion stay to keep her company. Pallasion had leaned down to nuzzle Murdonia before leaving, and Murdonia told him to not do anything stupid.

The Aspects led the way, with the mortal-turned-dragon carrying the rest of the Liberality Confederacy in addition to Go'el, and the three of us flew behind. Pallasion breathed raggedly the entire time, and when one of the mortals asked what was wrong with him, he let out a strangled 'Shut up!', drawing out snickers from Verthelion and I. Still, for Pallasion to fly for so long must've been an effort, and he did it. Go'el created vast wind currents, supporting and accelerating us to keep pace with the Aspects, and wherever we went he cleared out the storm clouds so we wouldn't be electrocuted.

Galakrond's Rest passed below us, massive bones of incomprehensible size. I couldn't make out his skull, if it was even above the snow, but I imagine it may very well be the size of an Aspect. Just his skull!

Soon enough, Dragonblight turned into the mountains, and the mountains we were in turned to Icecrown. The massive spire of the citadel stretched into the sky, so tall it made Wyrmrest look like a sapling. Cruel metal spires twisted around, and wind howled through the ramparts, creating a haunting melody that may have been the call of the dead. Far, far above, a sinister, choking blue light shone and pulsed with power. Around in the courtyard between that Citadel and the first gate stood thousands of undead, of all types, so dense I couldn't see the ice from them, all completely and utterly immobile. Icecrown sent chills up and down my spine, and the cold cut through my warming spell to chill my blood. No way this cold was natural. Just no way.

The Aspects set down a couple kilometers north of the first gate, Corp'rethar. Alexstrasza assumed a mortal form, and all the other dragons, myself included, followed suit. The mortal mages conjured food and drink, which they distributed amongst us. Once we were nourished, my queen spoke. "The time has come. Kalecgos and I will remain outside in our true forms. There is no way to tell how long it will take Neltharion to arrive, but once he does, I will claw at the ground infront of me. I assume that will be noticeable within the twilight realm?"

I nodded. "It will."

"Good. I will prepare the circle of life. Kalecgos, remain with me."

He nodded. "Yes, Lifebinder." The two Aspects began to pulse red and blue light, growing and shifting, until their true forms towered above us. Taking a deep breath, I entered my true form along with Pallasion and Verthelion, sinking partway into the twilight realm where we all stabilized ourselves. In the physical realm, I wordlessly brought flames into my crop and weaved a spell into the blast, firing it at the ground in front of me. The fireball exploded, leaving a portal to the twilight realm that the mortals entered, followed by Vajarn and Turliona, also in their true forms, and then the Aspects; the mortals and the Aspects were surrounded by the glow of their life essences. The two dragonspawn briefly sent out ripples within the twilight realm, but those soon ended as they stabilized. Nozdormu and Ysera released their own illusions, towering above me. I couldn't help but take a step back from Ysera, not after she had once killed my mate. She had no memory of it, since to her it never happened, but I would _always_ remember.

Outside in the physical realm, I saw Alexstrasza rear back, vibrant ruby fire swirling in her maw for a full minute before she released it, exhaling a stream of red flames onto a patch of black ice in front of her. Almost immediately, the ice turned to soil, and flowers blossomed around a fifty meter ring of earth. The air around it turned moist and warm, in contrast to the horrid cold of the surroundings.

In the twilight realm, I spoke. "And now... we wait."

Deathwing could not just suddenly teleport there. He had to take time to arrive. I sat on my haunches, lashing my tail along the ice. What was I doing? We were going up against _Deathwing!_ He could torch the entire Eastern Plaguelands in a matter of minutes! Just getting close to him would incinerate me! This was suicide!

Sensing my anxiety, Verthelion sat down next to me. "Hey, calm down. We'll get through this."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm just nervous, is all."

He chuckled. "Understandably. Hey, look. We won't die. Okay? Vajarn's plan is air-tight. He'll show up, we'll stun him, they'll tear off his plates, and then he dies. Simple as that."

"I know, I know. But I can't help but shake the feeling that something is wrong." I shook my neck, causing my capacitor to swing from one side of my neck to another. "Something's going to go wrong, I can feel it. What if Deathwing escapes _before_ Turliona can cripple his wing? Then what?"

"Oh, um, hmm. That's not a good situation. But that _won't_ happen, because we will _not_ let it come to that."

"Okay, okay." I took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm good. I'm good. Let's just wait now."

I stayed sitting, occasionally moving my wings or my legs to keep blood flowing. The Kingslayers milled about, getting into positions, Vajarn called Turliona off to the side, and the other Aspects simply stood next to where Alexstrasza and Kalecgos would be in the physical realm. I sunk completely into the twilight realm, so that not even my illusion would give away our plan to Deathwing. An air of anxiety fell on us as time went by and anticipation rose. A day passed. The mortals slept, and then awoke, and with some manipulation of the twilight realm, everyone was given conjured food and drink again. As noon passed on the second day, the skies went red, and thunder boomed through the twilight realm.

An Aspect-sized claw mark appeared in the ice, and a violet mist appeared on the horizon, with Neltharion flying in, his eyes glassy and unfocused, obviously unresponsive.

I let out a breath. "He's here." However much I knew it would be stupid, I couldn't help but poke the smallest bit of my essence into the physical realm, just enough for me to see, but still be invisible.

Alexstrasza and Kalecgos both stood ready, muscles tensed, a whirlwind of ice and snow radiating from the Blue aspect as Deathwing swept down, his aura of fire meeting with Kalecgos's own aura, canceling out. I heard his metal plates creak as they struggled to adjust to the temperature conflict; searing hot from their proximity to the Destroyer, and cold from the cold of Icecrown. He laughed as he set himself down, incinerating the circle of life with a breath of raw magma, which began to crack and harden into basalt from the cold. "Lifebinder. Is this where you have chosen your grave? Did you think your little spell would go unnoticed by me?" So much malice and hatred rolled off of him, I felt myself inundated in it even in the twilight realm. Titans, had I once been on _his_ side?

She shook her head. "I am sorry it had to come to this, brother. Please, I give you one last chance."

In the twilight realm, I spoke to the others. "Get ready. On three." Everyone, mortal and dragonkin alike, nodded, readying themselves. "One..."

Meanwhile, Alexstrasza continued. "We can help you. We can free you from your insanity. You don't have to do this!"

"Two..."

Deathwing gave off a sinister chuckle. "Free me? You think I need anything from you beyond your death? This world is - "

"THREE!" I cast out my magic, pushing everyone who couldn't exit on their own into the physical realm as we twilight dragons pulled ourselves out of the twilight realm, coming into the physical realm to kill Deathwing.

Countless beams of power crashed into Deathwing, streaming from the Aspects, the mortals, and us. The Destroyer roared, forced to lower his head as we stunned him. The group of Kingslayers without magic, and one Forsaken priest, began climbing his hind legs, bubbles of holy light surrounding them, so potent as to make Amanthe's look utterly useless. Vajarn extended a net of twilight energy onto one of the plates on his right wing-joint, and gave a fierce tug, pulling it clean off.

When the mortals got on his back, things went wrong. The small bit of power that Deathwing had cast out, just before we trapped him, began to grow; we hadn't taken him completely by surprise. Somehow he expected this, and was starting to resist us. If he hadn't, he'd be helpless, but his resistance made it feel like I was a mortal trying to hold onto a flopping fish still in the pond. "You fools! Do you think I do not have informants? Do you think I did not know what you intend to do to me?" My heart froze. Someone betrayed us? Someone told him our plan?

Turliona took out her daggers, infused with twilight energy, and hurled every one into the open wing joint, streaming with tainted blood and black scales, each one finding their mark. By the time she was out and started to aid in stunning him, the wing joint was glowing violet. A clank filled the air, and a red hot elementium plate, the size of my paw, came flying off. Deathwing roared in pain, and did the impossible.

He _moved_.

Just his wings, but he moved, and all at once half the mortals, and the dragonspawn, had their stuns interrupted. Desperately, I placed a twilight prison under him, and resumed my own channel, but his power grew fast, and it was nearly impossible to get a grip on him. The others tried to get back into the fight, but each attempt to stun him was met with failure. Three more clanks filled the air, each one accompanied by a metal plate falling off. But it wasn't enough.

Deathwing lurched, and all at once freed himself entirely. He reared up, making the mortals fall off, but not before they took off a fifth plate. I caught sight of the exposed scales and fired a blast at them, covering them in violet flame. The mortals who fell off fell slowly, courtesy of a levitate spell cast by the priest, and they hit the ground without injury.

His enormous wings flared out, striking me along the head with such force I found myself flying through the air, head stinging where the metal plates hit me. His barbed tail swung around, causing us dragons to duck to avoid it. Foolishly, we got back up, thinking it safe, and it cut a massive gash through Nozdormu's chest, and the Timeless one roared in pain.

But the damage was done. Deathwing was, however slowly, falling apart, his blood periodically spurting from the wound in his back, twilight fire burning into him. He was dying, and he knew it. He roared in a mixture of pain and fury, moments before breathing out a stream of magma at the Aspects, which they managed to deflect, before he took flight. "This... is not over!" With that, he turned tail and fled, black lightning arcing into the ice from his tail, covering his retreat.

Taking a few deep breaths, we all stood in stunned silence, trying to figure out what just happened, before Nozdormu spoke. "We must give him chase! He must not be allowed to escape!" He started to rise into the air, but failed thanks to his injury, blood streaming over the ice.

"Hold still, I will heal you," said Ysera, walking over to the Bronze Aspect. A flash of nature magic later, the gash was largely healed, but it was a _big_ scar, and he'd lost a fair bit of blood.

"Thank you. We must give chase." He turned to Verthelion. "Vajarn said you can follow him by his trail of corruption. Well?" The mage had already turned into a Blue, and Kalecgos's frost aura subsided as the gleaming red light that was Deathwing faded away.

My mate nodded. "Yes, we can. But what about Vajarn and Turliona?"

The General shook his head. "I can get us both back to Wyrmrest, you need to go chase him! He'll probably crash into the ocean and drown, but just in case he finds an island, you need to finish him off!" he said urgently. I could hear the flurry of over two dozen heartbeats pounding in their cages of bone, mine included.

Verthelion nodded, fading halfway into the twilight realm. Pallasion and I followed suit, a fresh path of violet mist outlining where he had flown. Verthelion continued. "All right, I can see it. Follow me!" With that, we all took into the air, mortals riding the shapeshifted one, Aspects following close behind us.

For a few hours, nothing happened beyond us straining our wings to go faster, drawing energy from the twilight realm to let us fly as fast as possible. But even so, the violet trail began to fade as we flew on; Deathwing was getting away. Once we flew over the Obsidian Dragonshrine, I found my voice, and talked to the others within the twilight realm. "How did he know? How could he possibly have known what our plan was?"

Pallasion grimaced beside me. "Didn't you hear him? We were betrayed. Somebody _told_ him."

"But who? Who could have told him?" I asked.

"It could have been anyone," my mate said. "I expect it was somebody from our group. But who would do that?"

I shook my head. "Oh, I don't know. If this - _Once_ this is over, and we're still alive, we'll have to find out." I noticed something off about our situation. I looked towards Pallasion. "Um, Pallasion?"

"Yes?"

"Why aren't you scared?"

"Scared? _Scared?_" he asked indignantly. "We don't have the _time_ for me to be scared! This may be the one opportunity to end Deathwing, and I am _not_ going to be the one who ruins it by not flying!"

I nodded. "Good. Good. We need to make haste, after all."

After that, we continued to fly on as fast as we could. We flew past the Ruby Dragonshrine, the coasts of Dragonblight, and soon all land was out of sight, but definitely not out of mind. Even better, Deathwing's trail in the twilight realm, which still continued to fade, faded more and more slowly as we went on. That could only mean one thing; he was slowing down.

Days passed over the open ocean, Ysera and Alexstrasza using their power to keep everyone nourished, and the Green Aspect also made it so that we did not need to sleep during the chase, and as such, the mortals could remain constantly vigilant. The effort Pallasion made to suppress his acrophobia was nothing short of incredible, and slowly but surely, as my senses told me we were halfway between Northrend's coast and the Maelstrom, Deathwing's trail began to brighten; we were getting closer. "He's slowed down a lot. We're gaining on him," I said in the physical realm.

Looking back, I saw the Dragonqueen nod. "Good. His madness may yet be put to an end."

As we got closer, the violet fog of Old God corruption that marked where Deathwing passed began to sink to the sea, slowly but surely. No lightning struck us, not with the shaman Go'el with us. I could see the swirling and churning of the Maelstrom's waters as we got closer, the waves drawn out into lines. We were so far away that the lines appeared nearly straight, but they were still there, the signs that we were getting close, and since we hadn't caught up to him yet, Deathwing was getting dangerously close. What if his wings didn't degrade fast enough? What if he made it through to Deepholm in spite of Vajarn's precautions? We would never be able to kill him in Deepholm, and the world would end, and everyone would die!

Waterspouts, ocean-bound tornadoes, churned around us on all sides, causing a slight rain of fish and squid and water-mammals around me. The ocean waves slammed into each other with the strength of a full grown dragon, sending spray up so high it nearly touched my chest-scales. Even from such a distance, I could hear a roar, barely within my hearing range, as water spiraled in millions of liters, falling into a central point.

The Maelstrom.

"Cutting it pretty close, Deathwing," I whispered to myself as the fog of corruption left in his wake began to descend at an exponential rate, growing thicker and thicker faster and faster. Several minutes later, the Maelstrom came into view.

Jagged stone spires reached towards the heavens, surrounding a central red beam of light that pierced into the clouds. Water fell into it at an unstoppable rate, crashing into the rocks and sending up clouds of mist that half obscured the sight. In front of it was an island, a small but not tiny thing with a massive rock on the end closer to us pointed towards the single largest whirlpool in the world. The island was of fair size for an Aspect, and the fog bent downwards to it rapidly.

A roar pierced the air, one filled with anger and frustration, so powerful the water surrounding the island was blasted back in a three-meter tall wave. Tinnitus rang in my ear-plates, drowning out all other sound for a few seconds. By the time I could hear anything else, Kalecgos already spoke.

" - landed there. He's not dead yet. We must go defeat him."

I saw Verthelion pulling himself out of the twilight realm, with Pallasion following his example. I did so, ready to bring all my power down on Deathwing. "All in," I muttered.

As we neared the island, an inferno came to view; a massive plated dragon radiating flames, with some of the plates on his back torn off and spurting black blood, eaten by violet fire. Pallasion growled.

"There are Faceless coming out of that cave! Take care of the Destroyer. I will handle them." Cave? Shifting back into the twilight realm briefly, I noticed violet splotches within the rock. Oh. That cave. Many splotches appeared continuously, spilling out. I pulled myself back to the physical realm.

Verthelion looked towards him. "_That_ many? You'll be killed!"

He scoffed. "I can handle _that_ many for a good amount of time. You forget how good I am. Go. I can handle them."

My mate nodded. "Be careful." With that, Pallasion let himself drop out of the sky, landing in front of the cave's massive entrance with an earth-shattering slam, a stream of twilight fire burning into the cavern.

I felt the wind beneath my wings dissipate as Go'el stopped accelerating our flight, and the Aspects quickly overtook us, moving hastily towards Deathwing. The mortal with a Blue dragon form dropped to the ground, returning to their mortal form and dropping the others to the ground. They all hit the ground rolling, running through the mist and the rain after the Black Aspect.

"You have done nothing! This world will be torn apart!" A shimmering barrier opened up around him, shadow and flame tied together. His flames stopped just inside the barrier, curling around as the barrier contained them. He jumped at Alexstrasza, who rolled under him and brought her fangs up to bite at him, but was intercepted by the Shadowflame barrier, which objected.

Violently.

Shadowfire exploded outward, washing over me with a powerful burning feeling, and bringing screams of pain from the mortals. Deathwing reared up on his hind legs, lifting his tail, and struggled with Alexstrasza, who also stood, forelegs pressed together as each tried to overpower the other. Deathwing may have been stronger, but he'd been falling apart, however slowly, for days now. Unfortunately, Alexstrasza could only defend herself, or risk triggering another Shadowflame burst.

The mortals took position to help dispel it. I flew next to the other Aspects, when I felt a chill run down my spine. I turned around in the air...

... to be met with a crippling beam of shadow, rendering me stunned and helpless as I fell to the ground.

Right next to the single most powerful and evil dragon in the world.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	44. Chapter 44:Combatant

**Happy Holidays everyone!  
><strong>

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for being my beta!  
><strong>

**Well, this is it. The climax of the story. Epic music time! **

* * *

><p><span>Rom<span>

When six beams of shadow exploded and caught the dragons and Go'el, that's when things went to all the hells.

They fell to the ground; Verthelion, Selriona, Go'el Nozdormu, Ysera, and Kalecgos were all stunned by the surprise and a black mist surrounded them, crushing in. The mist turned the Aspects into their mortal forms, but the others seemed to resist that effect, likely due to their shadow resistance. But what terrified me was where the beams came from.

We all turned around immediately to see six Faceless channeling the debilitation beams, and behind them, a massive Faceless General, shadow energy rippling over its skin to provide protection. It raised its pincers up to its face, black energy swirling about it, before it launched a shadow bolt at Angelica, our Forsaken warlock. She grunted, falling over from the pain, and lit up her hands with fire and blasted the general with searing pain. A moment later, I felt a tug on my being, and something flew out of me into her, in fact, something flew out of all of us into her, and I felt a certain frailty on me. She understood what was going on a moment before I did. "Spread away from me! I'll take the hits! Aruen, Fandulor, heal me! Free Go'el, then Ysera, Kalecgos, Nozdormu, then the Twilights! Melee, go for the general!"

I nodded, and pulled back Thori'dal's string, an arrow covered in toxin materializing in place, and shot the Faceless that kept Go'el stunned in the face. The arrow deflected off a magical barrier, but the venom got through, slowly degrading it. Dozens of other magical blasts rained down on it, and within seconds it perished, freeing Go'el.

"Thank you, friends. Now, let us free our draconic allies," said Go'el.

Angelica kept the focus of the gargantuan Faceless General well, continuing to blast it with sharp, stinging flames that, while they didn't do much damage, enraged it beyond belief. She withstood every blast of its shadow bolts, and nobody was close enough for its secondary, area drain, to take effect. A massive roar filled the air behind me. Turning around briefly as I shot the Faceless stunning Ysera, I noticed _him_ breathe a stream of molten rock over the Dragonqueen. The lava simply fell off from her, and the two resumed their struggle, roughly evenly matched.

The second one fell, and Ysera floated up, curling over in the fetal position, before she released a ripple of green energy outward from her. "You have my gratitude. Deal with the others. Do not worry, sister. I shall heal your wounds. Focus your strength on overpowering him."

A wave crashed into the beach and sent a cloud of mist over us, nearly drowning out Deathwing's roar. "Do not harbor false hope. This world will BURN!" I felt a web of magic extend outward from him, and though it had no effect on me, I saw what it did. It prevented the removal of shapeshifts. The Aspects, save for Alexstrasza, were stuck in their mortal forms.

When we freed Nozdormu, he said that he would slow the Shadowflame barrier's regeneration. He did do so, but after only a dozen or so seconds he had to stop, kneeling and catching his breath for a few moments before resuming. No surprise. When the Destroyer's tail swiped across him, he had lost a considerable amount of blood.

I looked up just in time to see the Faceless General launch a spinning volley of black stone at me, sailing through the air in slow motion. I had thought the Faceless enough times to know what _that_ was. I promptly dove out of the way of the shadow crash, the explosion sending rocks flying behind me. I got back up, and resumed pelting the Faceless Debilitators with arrows, helping to break through their protective magic to kill them.

Kolkna screamed.

I snapped my eyes over to her; she had collapsed near the Faceless Generals' left foot, and her green skin was pale, so pale, and a purple aura surrounded her, absorbing any healing directed at her. Any healing, except the black tendrils drawn out of those closest to her. That thing had done something, sucked nearly all the life out of her and now she drained vitality from those around her. The color returned to her, and then...

She exploded. Those near her were tossed away by the shadow nova, but she, being the epicenter, seemed completely unharmed.

Jaws open in shock, I stared at her numbly while my hands fired another bolt at the Faceless holding the Blue Aspect, piercing the protection it had and nailing it in the brain. It died instantly.

Turaniles came up with the plan in seconds, and proceeded to shout it out to us. "Groups of four! No more, no less! BUT STAY AWAY FROM ANGELICA!"

As Kalecgos extended an arcane beam into the Worldbreaker's barrier in an attempt to dispel it, along with Nozdormu's slowing of its regeneration, I found myself next to Frizzle, Ellemayne and Aruen. Driana, recipient of Illidan Stormrage's famed warglaives, dove out of the way of another shadow crash, just in time for us to free Selriona. The Twilight dragon roared, a sight that struck fear into me, before she took to the air, swiveling around to face Deathwing and extend a ray of twilight energy. I could see the Shadowflame Barrier fluctuate; she helped Kalecgos dispel it. It wasn't much compared to his efforts, but it seemed to balance out the regeneration of the barrier.

The Faceless General reared up, shadow energy collecting in its hands. Go'el saw what was coming first, and yelled to us. "Come to me, now! I will shield you from its attack!"

Not going to argue! Every single one of us crowded around him as a bubble of water materialized around the orc, and not a moment too soon.

The General placed its hands on the ground, releasing an enormous shadow nova. If I had been outside the barrier, no doubt it would have been devastating, but I only felt a light tickle from it. If only there was only one. Four more explosions followed, and I felt faint afterwards, but nothing our healers didn't fix in seconds. Turaniles cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered, "Back to formations!" We got away from Angelica, who the Faceless General still hated with all its might for the agony she inflicted on it, right before she got blasted with another shadow bolt, and we barely avoided having the life pulled out of us to heal her. It wasn't her who did it; the shadow bolts bombarding her created a vacuum in her life, drawing in the essence of those near her.

With another focused burst of ranged attacks, the final Faceless Debilitator fell, and Verthelion was freed. He took to the air, thanked us, and began to fire twilight blasts at the Faceless General, in addition to Go'el's lava bursts and our own onslaughts.

Then Frizzle fell beside me, a purple aura surrounding her. Instantly, I felt that horrible tug on my being as the spell on her pulled my life out to heal her. But we needed to do so. She couldn't heal otherwise. I felt myself growing fainter and fainter, but pulled through and continued to fire at the Faceless General; attacking Deathwing was suicide with that Shadowflame barrier around him, and no way this thing could be allowed to interfere with dispelling it. In roughly four seconds or so, Frizzle released a shadow nova as she was returned to health.

The air was squeezed out of my lungs and the strength left my legs, sending me collapsing to the ground, but my arms fired another bolt at Deathwing. The rest of our group of four pulled themselves up, and I followed them.

Just in time to see the shadow missile a meter from my face.

Thinking quick, I swung Thori'dal at it, the magical bow smacking a highly explosive and no doubt fatal shadow crash. I expected it to explode.

I did not expect it to fly upwards. I got an idea, and swung at it again as it came back down, sending it flying to Deathwing.

The shadows crashed on his Shadowflame Barrier, the flames beneath it going undisturbed as a massive shadowflame explosion washed over me, singing my flesh and briefly suffocating me, but I felt the warm touch of healing magics soon enough. Looking back, I smiled in triumph. The Barrier was weakened significantly. The others must've seen me, because soon we were all throwing the shadow-crashes over to Deathwing, each one weakening the Barrier and burning us, but we could heal from it, and Deathwing's shield was already being drained to the point of equilibrium between its loss and gain.

Driana rolled out of the way of another crash, swinging her twin warglaives at it and sending it towards Deathwing; the impact brought the shield's integrity to, oh, I'd say maybe half? She scurried up the General, intent on cutting off its head, when shadows began to boom around its hand. Turaniles yelled, "Go'el! Another volley!"

He nodded, sending another lava bolt at the Faceless one, combining with Verthelion's twilight blast to destroy its shield entirely. I hauled ass to Go'el, getting inside the water shield just in time. Others weren't so lucky, and took the full brunt of the first shadow nova before they got in; Driana got hit by two, but her momentum was enough to push her under the barrier. In the relative lull, I looked towards the struggle between Alexstrasza and Deathwing, taking in the situation.

The two were evenly matched, staying roughly at equal height, neither one gaining for more than a few moments. Twilight energy continued to burn along the Destroyer's back and in one wing joint, _days_ after being hit. Two beams of magic, one arcane and one twilight, arced into the weakening Shadowflame barrier, along which a bronze aura glowed, almost concealing the rising flames within.

Then the shadow novas stopped, and we scattered back out, avoiding a shadow missile that the Faceless had to tried to fool us with. We continued this dance for a little while longer, until finally, another shadow missile crashed along Deathwing's shield. It flickered, and began to rapidly fade away. Kolkna screamed a war cry as she leaped for the head of the Faceless General, bringing her sword down into its brain, the protective magic having been destroyed by countless strikes and spells. It died, collapsing to the ground in a cloud of dust, the warrior rolling away just out of range to avoid being crushed.

Another wave crashed along the shore, sending droplets all over the battlefield as we turned to Deathwing. "Foolish mortals! You think me weakened? You have merely brought about your own demise!"

Frizzle shielded her eyes as the barrier quickly faded, the flames contained underneath desperate to escape and incinerate us. She yelled at the top of her lungs, "Group up! This is going to be bad..."

We all ran to Go'el, who was busy charging up a massive lava burst to throw at Deathwing. Then, the Shadowflame barrier dissipated.

And a wall of fire rammed into us.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

This was it. The final showdown. No holding back, everything out, no scrap of power unused. My wings ached from the long flight over, but I forced myself to stay in the air. There was no room for weaknesses, not here, not now.

The half-elf that was Kalecgos's mortal form stopped channeling a beam of the arcane onto the Destroyer, and instead released a massive whirlwind of cold, engulfing us all, just in time for the fires held contained by the Shadowflame barrier to ram into us. The mortals grouped up, explosions of healing energy shaking the earth around them as gouts of fire washed over them. I didn't dare shift to my mortal form, not since I wouldn't be able to shift back thanks to that aura Deathwing gave off. Ysera healed the Dragonqueen's wounds, keeping the magma that routinely flowed over her from causing any lasting damage. Now that the Faceless were taken care of, and Deathwing's barrier removed, we could go on a full offensive against him. I flew next to Verthelion, squinting my eyes as fire washed around my twilight barrier.

"Let's do this." We both launched a massive blast of twilight energy at Deathwing, catching him along his elementium armor, sparking off harmlessly. The torrent of fire subsided and returned to normal levels, which were completely canceled out by Kalecgos's frost aura.

"WHOA, HEY, STOP! WHOA!" shouted Turaniles at me. "Do you _want_ it to deflect onto Alexstrasza?"

I quickly turned my head, changing the trajectory of my next blast from Deathwing to the ground. "Good point!" I shouted back over the din of the Maelstrom.

Deathwing's armor began to spark, and then took on a horrible red glow. Alexstrasza roared, breathing more of her ruby flames at him. Once the armor faded, she had burns all over her, which Ysera could barely heal. Luckily, the Kingslayers were on it. While Go'el fired lava bursts and lightning bolts at the Black Aspect, they healed her injuries, but not fast enough. She was going down, Deathwing slowly overpowering her.

"You are _weak_, Lifebinder!" he yelled, before breathing another torrent of magma over her and snapping at her neck. She turned away, avoiding the strike, but continued to lower.

"I can not hold much longer!" One of the large burns on her paws faded as the Kingslayers added their healing to the Green Aspect's. She began to rise, throwing Deathwing out of the dominant spot back into equilibrium, and then forcing _him_ down. "I am deeply sorry, brother." He roared at her in response as his barbed tail hit the ground.

The Kingslayers, spread out evenly along the island, made a motion to a few of them, and all at once the group of six that had torn off the first five of Deathwing's plates made a break for the lowered tail, using it as a bridge up to his back. That's when something caught my eye. Two rumblings in the earth, but in slow motion. A larger one near Go'el, and another one next to Deathwing's right hind leg. Go'el rolled out of the way just in time for a massive tentacle to burst out of that spot, black and barbed with spikes, twisting around in slow motion. Another, smaller one exploded next to Deathwing, slowed in a similar fashion. I heard one of the Kingslayers yell out orders, telling a certain group to go handle the one near Deathwing, and the rest to focus on the larger one. From what I could see, all the melee were on Deathwing's back, leaving the ranged attackers to handle the tentacles. Wait...

Tentacles?

"An Old God is under us! This is bad, _very _bad!" I said to nobody in particular. I dove at the tentacle closer to Deathwing, which spat out globs of some putrid green fluid at the mortals, biting down on it and breathing twilight flame onto it while I held it in my mouth. The blood tasted odd, and if I did not have a natural resistance to corruption, it would have killed me. It retracted into the ground to escape, and the ground shook elsewhere for a few seconds before a similar one popped up.

Deathwing began to rise, summoning his strength as his plates began to glow red-hot once more, the mortals on his back screaming in panic as they tried to limit the damage done to them. "Enjoy your fleeting moment of strength, this is not over!" As he rose he burned Alexstrasza for a few horrible seconds with his armor and breath, before pushing her down again.

I fired a blast at the large spiked tentacle, which, despite being slowed in time, was still remarkably fast, striking at the two blood-scented Death Knights around it with remarkable speed, and occasionally whipping around to slam the earth, sending a shockwave forward and knocking some of the mortals off their feet. Go'el fired a lightning bolt at one of the pulsating, slime-throwing tentacles, making it retreat into the earth amidst a shower of ocean spray, but not before exploding and releasing a torrent of black blood everywhere, forcing the heroes to their knees, coughing, before the human Death Knight cut the spiked tentacle in half, just in time for another one to erupt next to him and take a swipe, knocking him over to the side. Deathwing, having been pushed back by Alexstrasza, briefly turned his head and fired a blast. The fiery orb sailed through the air and struck off-center at Rom, catching him in the explosion and tossing him out of the forming ring of fire. The bolt continued on in a linear path away from Deathwing, exploding four more times and, consequently, leaving four more rings of fire, each of which was so potent it canceled out Kalecgos's frost aura.

Complete and utter chaos.

I noticed that Frizzle was well away from the others, blasting the new pulsating tentacle with arcane missiles. I took a break from launching twilight blasts and wove a spell on her. It would amplify her power, engulfing her in magic, but in an unstable manner. Any spell she cast would harm those near her, which is why I cast it on her; there _wasn't _anybody near her. She looked up at me as a series of twilight explosions radiated from her without effect, and mouthed a 'Thanks'.

Just then, a bolt of frost from the Blue Aspect sailed past me.

* * *

><p><span>Kolkna<span>

Fire.

That's all that my world was. I couldn't remember his name through the battle's chaos, but the Forsaken priest with us kept me from sustaining too many burns thanks to Deathwing's blazing hot armor, especially when he put more power in it to burn the Dragonqueen. Oh, he tried to shake us off, but with the majority of his attention occupied by Alexstrasza, there wasn't anything he could do that could shake any of us off. The little wound left from us during the confrontation in Northrend still burned with twilight fire, but we had been unable to pry up anymore thanks to the tiny webs of shadow magic keeping them down. Until Kalecgos launched a frost bolt onto his back.

The bolt of ice caused them tremendous thermal shock to the plates, which burned the bottom of my feet even through my armor. True to the Twilight general's word, each plate really was multiple smaller plates strung together. And three of these sub-plates were peeled up by the Blue Aspect's attack. Almost immediately they began to close, the shadow webs pulling them back into place, but one didn't compress. Explosions of twilight energy rocked it repeatedly; looking for the source, I saw that the second male Twilight was the one doing so, keeping the plate from falling back into place with his twilight shocks.

I waved the others over, watching as the others in our guild battled the tentacles below, keeping them from gathering too much. "This one!" The other four rushed over and placed their weapons under the plate, and together with the twilight shocks, we pulled it off just as the other two sub-plates rejoined Deathwing's body. It was a massive plate, half the size of my body, and underneath it were obsidian scales, with red light shining between the cracks. Deathwing gave another lurch, sending me to my stomach, sliding down his back. I growled, grabbing the metal with my hands as my sword skidded down to me. Another lurch sent my chin into the armor, causing pain to flare along my head in addition to the searing, scalding heat along my body that was caused by touching the metal.

I grabbed my sword and, using its leverage, pulled myself to my feet, feeling gravity's near-vertical tug on my being, growling, pushing past the pain to go for the next plate Kalecgos had loosened and the Twilight kept from sealing. Sparing a glance down, I saw five rings of flame forming a straight line away from the Destroyer, vaporizing any ocean water that the waves tossed up to them. A spiked tentacle swung near Ysera, and it was all our two Death knights, Alvin and Kormor, could to to keep its attention on them instead of her, seeing as how all her focus was on keeping the Lifebinder's burns healed. Two of our casters, too far away for me to make out, were giving off explosions of twilight energy, similar to the engulfing magic Theralion had used within the Bastion of Twilight. I noticed the female Twilight turn towards someone, and a spark of shadow briefly lit up her maw, and more explosions began to come from them, but there was nobody in range for them to hit.

Of course. She wasn't doing that to injure us; she did it to amplify their spells. The dragon turned back around, firing more dark blue fireballs at a pulsating tentacle just as we pulled off another plate, making the dragon under my feet roar, neither in pain nor fury, but a mixture of both, agony and anger becoming one emotion for the Black Aspect. The male Twilight looked our way and fired two small blasts of twilight fire into the air.

They coiled around through the air before striking at the exposed patches of scales, exploding and covering them in fire, making Deathwing give another lurch below us, sending Driana to her feet for a moment before I helped her up, still ignoring the searing heat, then running to another cluster of three plates, and like always, one was being kept up via explosions of twilight energy beneath the surface, counteracting the web of shadows that pulled the other two plates down in a matter of seconds. Driana gave out a roar and swung both her warglaives up with such force the plate came clean off. I looked at her in shock. "Remind me _never_ to mess with you."

"Gladly! Next plate's open for engulfing!"

"Got it! Watch out!" yelled the dragon, launching a fireball. True to his aim, the black scales beneath began to burn with the unnatural fire; not fire, not shadow, and yet not true shadowflame either.

Before Kalecgos could launch the next shatter blast, the priest with us began to run. "We need to get off! NOW!" I didn't argue with him. I ran to the side of Deathwing, ducked below an orb of putrid slime fired by another tentacle, and jumped down. The air whirled under my feet, slowing my fall to a glide, and I hit the ground running. I looked back just in time to see a massive wave of magma sweep over Deathwing's back. Ancestors, if I had been there when that hit...

"You, down there!" I looked up to see what the Twilight male was yelling at us for, his companion swooping down and ripping a gargantuan spiked tentacle in half with her fangs. A flash of lightning pierced through the sky, the thunderclap drowning out the sounds of the Maelstrom and the battle for a moment. "You need to enter the twilight realm. There's something you need to see there..." he said ominously, before firing a massive twilight blast near us. It hit the ground with a _crack,_ opening one of those horrible twilight realm portals, shifting with shadows and twisting about. The others went in without complaint, but I could only stare. I'd entered one of these countless times before! Why did I freeze up now?

It was when Deathwing fired a blast at me that I quickly dove into the portal, desperate to escape the explosion and the ring of fire. Darkness fell over my eyes, obscuring my vision. Chills ran up and down my spine, before I was vomited of a return portal into the terrible realm of eternal twilight, of constantly looming night. Shadows and mist curled around me. Only five of us remained in, along with the Twilight male, and the enormous, chained black wyrm that had to be Neltharion. Waves of shadow crashed into me, making me grit my teeth as each one increased in intensity. The lesser dragon with us shook his head.

"Pallasion is using the twilight realm to defeat the Faceless. He doesn't know you're here. I can ward you from the effects, but the bombs you'll just have to avoid."

Bombs?

Looking up, I saw hundreds,and I mean _hundreds_, of pulsing indigo orbs, sinking slowly down to touch the earth. One did; it released a massive explosion, right next to an indigo-colored bubble that had just formed near Neltharion's forelegs. "Get under there. It'll protect you from Pallasion's aura." Not willing to argue, I did as he said. The moment I entered the shield, I felt the grating of the twilight realm fade to nothing. Then, much to my surprise, Neltharion spoke, looking down at us from his reared-up position, the same on the Destroyer was in, eyes coming into focus as if he were waking up from a long dream.

"You have come to destroy Deathwing? To save Azeroth? I agree with your cause, unlikely as it may seem. Deathwing must be stopped, but I can not do anything. These chain inhibit me. Destroy them, and I will give you any aid I can."

All six of us looked towards the chains, and jumped at the one on the true Black Aspect's right foreleg, each strike passing through it like it were mist, but disrupting it nonetheless. The one we attacked struck back, sending arrows of shadow energy at us. We continued to hack at it, in addition to blasts of holy light and twilight flame raining on it, until the chain faded to nothingness, leaving only four.

"Good, good," Neltharion murmured. I know I shouldn't trust him. But any possibility of help to stop that behemoth in the physical realm, I would take.

* * *

><p><span>Pallasion<span>

"Is that the best you can do?" I gloated, using a chain of shadow energies to hurl another Faceless towards me, impaling it on a wing talon before it fell off, the hole in its chest making it bleed to death in moments. I dodged the strike directed at my left hind leg, and bit down on the head of the one in front of me, interrupting whatever spell it had been casting prior and hurled it into the one I had just dodged with such force that both were killed. I swatted my tail at one's feet behind me, knocking it down and bringing the club down on it, creating a satisfactory wet _crack_, more tainted blood coating my scales, but it had no effect. Another one tried running up my tail and over my back to crush my head, but I saw it coming. Just as it reached my neck I bent down, scooted back, and came back up, impaling it on my horns as a twilight bomb exploded on it. I flicked my head, removing it from my horns to make room for more that would undoubtedly wind up there.

In the physical realm, another dozen pulled themselves out of the earth. They rose like bubbles in boiling water, and made a dash for me. Instantly I pulled them all into the twilight realm, where I released an arc of twilight lightning to annihilate half of them, before clawing apart the next five. I lowered my head next to the final one, which just looked me in the eye, raising its tentacle-like left arm for a strike.

In the blink of an eye, I flared out my tusks and retracted them, leaving a hole in the Faceless's neck, from which black blood spurted.

Fifteen more appeared, and I just laughed. Did whoever kept sending them really think that these pitiful excuses of Old God minions would take me down, in _any_ number? "Six, fifteen, a hundred! Bring it on!" I challenged, before pulling that bunch into the twilight realm, where I promptly massacred them, swiping my claws, tearing through flesh like parchment. I grabbed one in my fangs and bit it in half, throwing both chunks at another, knocking it down and interrupting its spell. I wondered how the others were doing. Were they being, at this very moment, torn apart by the Destroyer's forces?

Or were they tearing him apart, removing plate after plate, engulfing him in increasing amounts of twilight flame as his instability began to make him fall apart? I had no way of knowing. Time lost meaning in this place, at the entrance to the cave, piling up the corpses of the Faceless, making the ground run black with their blood. These pathetic weaklings could come in as many numbers as they wanted; nothing would change.

How was Murdonia in Wyrmrest with Sheralion? Had members of the other flights taken advantage of their isolation to kill them? That thought made my blood run cold, and I almost took a bone-shattering hit to my forelegs.

Almost.

No. The Dragonqueen had said for them to not be harmed. They would listen to our queen. That much was certain. I took a deep breath and roasted seven Faceless casters. I had to keep my focus on the task at hand; keep the Faceless back, prevent them from interfering with the battle. No matter the cost.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

It seemed every time we forced one of the Old God's tentacles back, another one took its place. Alexstrasza and Deathwing continued their struggle, snapping and biting at each other, neither one gaining an advantage for more than a few seconds. Basalt covered the land around Alexstrasza as Deathwing's magma breaths cooled and hardened, and black, tainted blood from the Faceless that had stunned us began to seep out from their bodies. Nobody could get back onto Deathwing to pull off his plates, since he didn't dare lower his tail like so again, and even if he had, the waves of fire that he had wash over him periodically would have made any attempt to do so foolhardy. But even if more plates couldn't be removed, he had already lost many, and combined with his instability, and the twilight fire my mate had engulfed his few exposed scales in, he was dying much faster.

I briefly peeked into the twilight realm to see what was going on; Verthelion had the heroes that had been on the Destroyer's back dissolving the chains around Neltharion, dodging the twilight bombs that slowly sunk down. What they planned to accomplish with this, I had no idea. Neltharion didn't have any power... did he?

I engulfed Frizzle in my magic again, doubling her power. Looking up, I saw a massive fireball careening my way. I sunk entirely into the twilight realm, waited a few seconds, and came back out. I fired a blast at another pulsing tentacle, the only one above the cracked earth at the moment, forcing it to sink after spraying its blood over all of us before I could place wards over anyone.

What were we going to do now? Just wait for Deathwing to drop dead? Keep fighting off the tentacles until we found a way to kill him? Adrenaline coursed through my veins. Every detail of the fight came into perfect clarity. The slowing that Nozdormu applied to the tentacles, Ysera's healing of her sister's wounds, Kalecgos radiating frost to negate Deathwing's body flames, five rings of fire in a line, the Kingslayers moving around in complicated motions as more horrors popped out of the earth, Verthelion's physical self aiding me in blasting whatever tentacles he could, the swirling of the Maelstrom behind the Destroyer, _everything_. Something had to give, and soon. We'd been at this for a while now. I'd lost track of time. Maybe ten minutes? Something had to give soon, something had to change.

Sadly, it was Deathwing who took that initiative.

He took a deep breath, shadow energy coalescing in his maw, so much power behind it that I knew it could kill nearly anything, save an Aspect. A distracted Aspect, in their mortal forms, however...

Time slowed down as he turned his head towards Ysera, firing a blast of deathly powerful shadows at her. She was utterly distracted with healing Alexstrasza. Did she even notice it?

I forgot that Ysera had killed my mate. I forgot that I had no chance of surviving a blast meant for an Aspect. All I knew was that if she died, my queen was not far behind.

"NO!" I drew every drop of mana out of my body, siphoned every spark of arcane energy out of my capacitor, weaving it into a barrier around me stronger than anything I had every created before. I sunk into the twilight realm as far as I could while still being tangible in the physical world, and dove at the ground in front of Ysera, determined to get to her before the seething, chaotic mass of shadows did.

An explosion of pain shot through my chest. The force of the death blast sent me flying horns over tail behind Ysera, coming to a rolling stop. My barrier was shredded, hardly slowing down the blast, but phasing into the twilight realm and my natural shadow resistance saved me. I was, however just, alive. But I hurt so much...

I whined as the Destroyer roared in rage, "Imbecile! Traitor!" Just before Alexstrasza began to overpower him again, breathing her ruby flames at him. Ysera glanced at me, her glowing eyes widened in shock, before she grit her teeth and continued to heal the Red Aspect. I couldn't blame her. The Dragonqueen's life was more important than mine.

Sounds began to fade and echo, color washed out of the scene. My eyes closed of their own accord, and I felt myself slowly rising out of my body.

* * *

><p><em>"Damn that gnome and her sympathy accelerators." She walked over to me. I heard the knife coming off the robe's black loops with a kkrrshhrkk. I flinched what few muscles I could. She laid the knife sideways on me, and put her hands on either side of the blade. So this was it. I relaxed everything I could. If I tightened, it would be even more painful. This was it. I may be the only Twilight who knows that the voice was lying, and now I was going to die. I was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to be scared. I was the strongest of my brood.<em>

_But I still wasn't strong enough._

_I gasped when a wave of warmth rolled through my body, extending from the knife's point. The warmth spread through my body, head to tail. So this is what dieing felt like? Huh, not so bad. I felt some things all along my body snap, sending shudders up and down my body. Hold on, I can move? How can I move? My tendons are mostly broken. I opened my eyes and I could not comprehend what I saw._

_That druid moved her hands in slow circles over my side, a soothing green light flowing out of them. I felt my tendons fusing together, the hole in my wings shrinking to a scar. What? How? She's... saving my life? Why? I, I haven't given her any reason to do so!_

_"W-why?"_

_She sighed, but when she spoke, her voice wasn't a female's but rather that of a male. "You took that blast for Ysera. You're very injured, and we need all the help we can get in this dark time. Which is why I'm healing you."_

* * *

><p>I snapped my eyes open to the feeling of nature magic washing along my scales, groaning. Ocean water splashed over me in small droplets as another wave pounded the island, the crackle of fire enveloped my ear-plates. A green bolt of ooze sailed past me, slamming into something out of my line of sight. One of the night elves, a male, stood next to me, casting repeated healing spells onto me. Looking closely, I saw that it was the same one that drew me into a dream for Kolkna to taunt me just after I escaped Stormwind. Fandulor, was it?<p>

Strength began to flow into my muscles, and my heart-beat, loud and deafening in my ear-plates, slowly sped up. The pain throughout my body receded, and I growled in determination, hoisting myself to my forelegs, ignoring the pain that shot through my bones at the motion. I turned my head to the kaldorei, nodding. "Thank you. I can take care of myself from here."

He stopped the flow of magic, standing back as I flapped my wings, forcing myself into the air. I drew from my magic, using shadow mends to restore the rest of my strength. Hold on, magic? I thought I had used up all my power to create a barrier. Checking myself, I noticed that my mana pool wasn't drained in the least. I noticed the Blue Aspect looking at me, nodding. I nodded back, and blasted another pulsating tentacle, slightly singing its skin. How close had I come to dying? And how long had I been unconscious?

Long enough for Deathwing to take back the upper hand from Alexstrasza.

He slammed his head into her's, and she buckled beneath his weight, struggling to keep him from ripping out her throat. But that wouldn't be needed. I saw him charging up another blast, similar to the one I had just intercepted, but far, far more powerful, enough to kill my queen. There was nothing anyone could do. Nothing to interrupt it, nothing to save her. The blast would go through, she would die, and all of us soon after.

Suddenly, Deathwing roared, taking his weight off Alexstrasza. I saw his eyes flicker between their bottomless wells of burning red hate and a gentle, dark brown. "Don't... give... up!" he yelled. "Fight him with everything you have!"

His eyes snapped back to red, and he roared, once again being held off by Alexstrasza, both balancing on their hind legs. She looked at him with a horrified expression. "Neltharion?"

"NELTHARION IS GONE! ONLY DEATH REMAINS!" Black arcs of lightning sprouted around him, tightening around him like a fishing net, holding him together, nullifying our fires and his instability. He wasn't dying anymore.

Verthelion appeared next to me out of nowhere, no doubt having been in the twilight realm. Beside him, the six that had ripped off his plates materialized, dripping twilight essence that would render shadow magic useless against them for nearly half a minute. "Did it work?" he asked.

"Did what work?" I winced speaking those words, my flank aching where I had taken the blast.

"Neltharion. The Kingslayers I took into the twilight realm freed him, even if just for a moment before the chains regrew, much stronger than before."

I nodded. "It worked, and just in time, too. He was about to kill the Lifebinder."

He let out a breath. "Good. Good. But now what?"

Turaniles answered for me. "He's protected from his instability, AND from the fire!"

Go'el stepped up, facing the Worldbreaker with a determined look on his face, raising his mace to the sky. "Protect me. I shall call upon the spirits of air to strike."

The Kingslayers nodded, forming a protective barrier around Go'el as lightning began to strike at him from the churning, writhing storm clouds above, filling him with electrical power. Verthelion and I finished off the few remaining tentacles, and much to my relief, no more erupted out of Azeroth's crust.

"I've got an idea!" Verthelion said, firing a blast at the ground next to Go'el, opening a twilight portal. "Mortals, use the portal. Cover yourselves in twilight essence so that no shadow magic will harm you here." The Kingslayers all entered the twilight realm, and phasing myself in slightly, I saw that Verthelion had created an exit portal in the same spot. Within moments, every one of the mortals, save for Go'el, who placed all his focus and preparing whatever spell he was going to unleash, was sopping wet with the essence of the twilight flight.

Not a moment too soon, either.

Faceless rose out of the ground, making a beeline for Go'el. Tall, unstoppable ones that were only killed by stray arcs of lightning from the World Shaman, and smaller ones that hurled shadow bolts in all directions, but to no effect thanks to the essence of the twilight realm. Deathwing raised his tail and stabbed the barb at the ground, but was unable to reach Go'el, and his searing blasts directed towards Go'el were all intercepted. It went on like that for a long time, the electric charge steadily growing, the blood of the Faceless staining the ground, heat filling the air with every magma breath.

"The sun has set on this mortal world, fools!" I looked up, seeing Deathwing's armored flank rippling with shadow magic, making his earlier blast seem trifling in comparison. "Make peace with your end, for the Hour of Twilight FALLS!"

Oh no.

Knowing what he was about to do, I quickly fired a blast at Go'el, engulfing him in twilight energy like an air bubble, just in time for Deathwing's ultimate spell to complete.

It was like a tidal wave burst from him. The blackness of the spell washed out from him in an unstoppable force, only just deflecting off the shields the other Aspects had placed on themselves. The Liberality Confederacy took the full brunt of the spell, but being engulfed in the essence of our flight, it did nothing to them beyond have them loose their footing briefly. The barrier I placed on Go'el took the blast for him, crumbling but leaving the World Shaman untouched. Verthelion and I escaped the attack by falling into the twilight realm. Even there, the ripples Pallasion gave out from far away briefly ceased as Deathwing's attempt to prematurely bring about the Hour of Twilight crashed through the scene. Shifting back into the physical realm, I saw that the wave of the attack continued to spread farther beyond, kilometers away, stopping just before it left my sight.

"The spirits of air hear me. It won't be long now. Just hold out a little longer!", said Go'el.

Could it be? I dove down, grabbing a Faceless in my jaws, biting down on it and flinging it away. Could this finally be it? After all of this, could Go'el finally be ready to put an end to Deathwing? He'd been preparing this spell for so long, gathering power for over four minutes, as opposed to the seconds most spells require. How powerful would this be?

Ozone charged the air, the crackle of electricity humming in my ear-plates. I felt tiny static charges fly in between my horns, and an expanding ring of electricity formed around the orc, contacting Deathwing's tail as he went for another strike, making him roar in pain. Vajarn had said that the plates weren't conductive. How much power was in that so that it still went into his flesh?

"Lifebinder, get clear!", Go'el yelled. My queen looked at him, nodding. She gave up her advantage over Deathwing to fall back, making him stumble. He looked our way, taking in a deep breath, ready to spray molten rock over us all.

Then Go'el threw down his hands.

The skies tore open, ropes of lightning as thick as Alexstrasza's tail arcing down from the heavens, blasting all the Faceless with such power that there was simply nothing left of them, the sheer force behind the strikes first pulverizing the stone into sand, and then melting it into glass. The lightning storm blasted into Deathwing's back, lighting up his body with tendrils of blue light. I smelled nothing but ozone, engulfing me in its smell. Even the waves and the Maelstrom seemed to stop for those long, few seconds as Go'el continued to channel, lightning arcing along his forearms, and amidst the deafening din of thunder around the Black Aspect, I heard him roaring in agony as he collapsed to the ground.

The moment it stopped, Go'el collapsed, so still I would have thought him dead if not for the rising and falling of his chest.

Deathwing's armor cracked, and shattered, leaving him with only a few shattered pieces of elementium burrowed into his flesh, the shadow ties around his body the only thing that kept him from falling apart right then and there. A massive swell of fire radiated out from him, nipping and biting at my flesh even through Kalecgos's aura of frost. Black scales were ringed with orange blood, seeping down, and hundreds of tiny black tentacles dotted his flesh, clustering around the few plates remained.

He raised himself, making my blood freeze in my veins. Impossible, how was he not yet dead? NOTHING could have survived that storm. NOTHING! "I... am... Deathwing! The Destroyer!" He raised himself, pouncing at Alexstrasza. She raised herself in time, catching him by the forelegs, the two standing once again to resume their struggle. "The end of all things! Inevitable! INDOMITABLE! I AM THE CATACLYSM!" A clap of thunder echoed around the island.

Not enough. All this, and it wasn't enough!

He let loose another blast at Go'el, but Kolkna intercepted it, raising her sword as a makeshift shield to keep the flames from touching the unconscious shaman. Then I saw the Worldbreaker's blood pooling.

It spurted from his scales, forming an ever-growing pool of orange death, closing in on the Kingslayers. I thought back to the piece of information the Twilight Father had accidentally revealed.

_The power of his corruption is unwithstandable, to all except your flight. You can ward them. _I turned to Verthelion. "Get ready. I'm going in." Once I assumed my mortal form for the additional mana, the magic Deathwing radiated would prevent me from leaving said mortal form.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

"Just do what you need to do." I let myself fall down, shifting to my human form in mid air, raising a twilight barrier around myself to absorb the flames. I landed next to Go'el, and took a deep breath. I knelt down, and extended my power outward into a twilight shell, warding off the taint of Deathwing's blood. The Kingslayers moved within the shell, watching over Go'el, and began their onslaught.

One of them yelled, "Now or never!", before strength filled me. Time slowed down. The battle went in slow motion. The strain of keeping the twilight shell active was barely even noticeable beyond the white glow around my hands, and around each of the mortals. "Go for his heart!" A hail of spells, arrows, and bullets all filed into a single path, crashing into Deathwing's flank and slowly, but surely, burrowing a hole in his flesh. More blood spurted, but did nothing within my twilight shell. But it did summon some... things.

They rose out of the blood within my twilight shell, orange fluid twisting around to form eight monstrosities of Deathwing's blood, looking like simple mounds, but as the blood dripped around them they formed gaping maws and beady eyes, and their corruption was so potent that I could sense my protective aura diminish to nothing around them.

The final chance. It was now... or never.

Deathwing raised his barbed tail, dripping with his blood and covered in those horrible tentacles, armor shredded by the lightning storm, and impaled it in the ground.

* * *

><p><span>Kolkna<span>

Flames whirled around me, hot and searing, taking away the air from my lungs, yet I managed to squeeze in a few gulps of air, and our healers didn't let any of us die under the onslaught of flame. The six of us ran up Deathwing's tail while he struggled to remove it from the ground, the shredded armor making it stick into stone, slicing our weapons at the tentacles along the 'road' of armor, cutting them in half only for them to regenerate in seconds. Heroics pounded in my head, giving my dash extra speed, made my swings faster, and all around, made me _better_. It wouldn't last long, though.

The Twilight female had entered her mortal form and protected my allies from the Destroyer's tainted blood, good of her to do so. They fought with the constructs risen out of his blood, dodging the blasts of fire both Deathwing and they threw at them. Whenever one died, it left behind a purple pool around it, the taint canceling out the shell of protective twilight.

Go'el had fallen unconscious. A terrible, blood-chilling sight. The dragons continued to fight, Kalecgos releasing volleys of frost to destroy the aberrations, Ysera healing the Dragonqueen's wounds as fast as they appeared, Nozdormu accelerating our movements with his weakened power, and the Twilight male engulfing all of Deathwing's exposed scales in twilight flame, before raining blasts onto him.

Blood pounded in my ears as I raced up his back, no waves of devastating flame this time. We hacked and slashed through the horrors sprouting from his hide, ignoring the agonizing, engulfing pain. Through the flames flying off the Worldbreaker I noticed something crawl out of his blood, a white blob the size of a drake.

"THERE!" I yelled, pointing at it, my voice cracking from the dryness of my throat.

Utilizing the dwindling surge of power from the Heroism spell, I jumped at the thing, some sort of lymphocyte perhaps. I slashed my sword across it, sending globules of membrane and other stomach-turning fluids onto the ground far, far below, mixing with Deathwing's blood. It struck at me, moving its top forward to slam into my armor. The fluid seeped through, burning my skin, further fueling my rage. The other caught up with me, and quickly we dispersed the globule, just in time for another to come up. Those things are _not_ getting down to the others, who were busy attacking Deathwing in a single spot, slowly making their way to his heart, healing and protective spells flying everywhere I looked.

"You're pathetic efforts are in vain! This world will BURN!" Looking back, I saw Deathwing raise his tail again, before striking down at Rom. He didn't dodge in time, and became nothing but a gory mess, Thori'dal skittering to Ellemayne's feet.

I shook my head, wrenching my focus back to the task set before me. Distractions were fatal here.

Ruby flames washed over me as Alexstrasza attacked Deathwing, healing my burns and filling my lungs with much-needed air. I roared, bringing my sword down on yet another lymphocyte, as Deathwing began to hemorrhage over the ground again. The white blood cell having been killed, we struck at Deathwing's scales, causing as much damage as we could... only for a wave of his blood to crash over us.

I _felt_ his anger, his pure rage at Alexstrasza, for daring to thwart his perfect world. At me, for having the audacity to climb on his back like a pack mule. At the world, for all its uselessness, at not ceasing its pathetic existence. His fury burned into me, _injured_ me with just his emotion, before his blood finally flowed off my armor, stopping the emotional torrent. I tasted blood; I had pressed my teeth together so hard I bled.

Down below, a few more conglomerations of blood rose within the flickering twilight barrier.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"Aaarrgh!" I screamed, my hands shaking from the effort it took to sustain the barrier. It had exhausted me to channel it for a minute; I was going on two, with no end in sight. I couldn't keep it up forever, that much was obvious. Once I failed, his blood, just his blood, would kill them all, essentially ending the world.

I was vaguely aware of Ellemayne taking up Thori'dal, leading the enormous, unstoppable Faceless ones into twilight prisons placed down by my mate, flying above me, the modified twilight prisons quickly killing the abominations. Healing spells flew around me like fireworks, the Kingslayers desperately trying to not burn to a crisp.

Blood flew as the Kingslayers below attacked the horrors risen out of the Destroyer's life fluid, splattering them but leaving permanent auras of corruption, where my shield was useless, where Deathwing's blood would kill. Through the fire, I saw Kolkna and the others fighting some sort of white glob on the Black Aspect's back, scattering its liquid interior around the island.

Everything around me hurt; my own, personal barrier had collapsed under the fire. Flames ripped at my skin, pain shot through my bones like arrows as I forced myself to keep the ward against corruption active. Deathwing had Alexstrasza at a constant disadvantage, his flames letting him keep her overpowered, but she didn't falter, continuing to snap at the now exposed scales on his head, drawing blood. There was a giant hole in Deathwing's flank where the Kingslayers slowly carved out his flesh, reaching for his heart. A blast of black lightning shot out of said hole, striking Frizzle in the head, killing her instantly.

"We're so close, don't give up now!" I heard Nozdormu shout over the roar of the flames and the din of the Maelstrom and the crashing of the waves and the buzzing in my head. I couldn't give up, because this was our last chance, and to give up would be to die.

But would that really be so bad? To die? If I died, then I wouldn't have to endure this. I wouldn't have to face the challenges provided by the world. If I just gave up, I wouldn't need to worry about Verthelion's well being, or being killed. All I had to do was just give up, and nothing would ever hurt me ever again. All I had to do was drop the barrier. The Kingslayers would die, and I would be soon after, and I would be free from all the pain I would otherwise suffer.

More blood spurted from Deathwing, the fourth time if I counted correctly. My vision began to blur; all I saw were figures in brown and yellow and blue fighting globs of orange against a blazing red inferno.

I felt my strength fading, and nothing would be able to bring it back. I'd gone to far this time, attempted too much. This was beyond me. I couldn't do it. But we were so _close!_ Deathwing had to be almost dead, they had to be close to his heart! If I could just hold on a _little_ longer, than it would all be good, it would all be done, because we'd be victorious, he'd be dead, and the world would be saved.

Give up now and end my pain, or fight on?

My decision was made for me when an explosion knocked the wind out of me. Searing heat slammed into me from the side, sending me flying, coming to a rest in a warm, orange fluid and interrupting my spell. Try as I might, I couldn't find the strength to bring it up again. Screams of pain filled the air as the Destroyer's blood burned at the mortals...

And were drowned out by Deathwing's agonized roar of defeat.

* * *

><p><strong>God, longest chapter I've ever written. Review, let me know what you think of it.<br>**


	45. Chapter 45:Prime

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, huge, HUGE thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I groaned, opened my eyes, and took in the scene. My head rested in Verthelion's human arms, and my internal clock told me I'd been unconscious for roughly a half minute. Rain fell onto the island, but it was closer to a drizzle than a downpour. The sound of pounding waves reached my ears, as did the massive rumble of the Maelstrom, hidden from view. Red blood covered the ground. Wasn't it supposed to be orange and glowing, like lava?

Go'el lay still on the ground, a Blood Elf fanning air onto him in attempts to awaken him. The corpses of Faceless were sprinkled on the island, and mortals were scattered around the Earthbinder, kneeling as they took in deep, gasping breaths. Infront of us all laid the Destroyer, Deathwing. He armor was shattered, some sparks of electricity still jumping between them. His obsidian scales were tinted red with his blood, limp tentacles hanging down from patches of it, dark blue fire burning along most of his body, his eyes turned from their blazing red to a gentle, but pain-filled, brown. Enormous elementium plates lay scattered around the island, scorched by the lightning storm.

The other Aspects had assumed their true forms, now that Deathwing's form restriction aura had fallen. They gathered around Deathwing, looking down at their fallen brother as he lay at the Lifebinder's claws. He took shaking, gasping breaths as blood flowed freely from the wound in his flank, the wound that pierced his heart. No more fire radiated from him. The black lightning that held him together had vanished, yet he did not fall apart.

"Alexstrasza...", he said, his voice low and strained.

"It is over now. Your reign of terror has come to an end... Deathwing." I noticed it was the first time she had ever said 'Deathwing', not Neltharion.

"No. Not Deathwing. Not anymore. In these final moments, I am Neltharion." He let out a cough, blood coming out of his mouth, and more out of his wound.

Alexstrasza's eyes widened. "Neltharion... is it truly you? How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"What would be the point in lying? I am dying."

"All this time, all this time," Ysera mumbled. "We could have saved you? You were not behind Deathwing's actions?"

A wet cough. "No. There was no saving. Deathwing and I were never separate entities. Just him, the portion of my mind that went mad, and Neltharion, the portion that remained sane. The portion he had chained in the twilight realm as soon as he could." He coughed again, more blood coming out. "There was never any possession. Everything I have done, I am accountable for."

Kalecgos spoke, narrowing his eyes. "You've unleashed unspeakable atrocities, both on this world and on our Flights. If you feel you are accountable for all this..."

"I deserve to die. I realize this." All other activity seemed to have ceased; nothing existed but Deathwing's - no, _Neltharion's_ final words to the Aspects. "In my final moments of life, I just want to say..." He looked up at Alexstrasza. "I am deeply sorry. For everything I have done. None of you deserved what I have put you through."

The Dragonqueen shook her head. "Neltharion... the things you have done..." She hesitated, then sighed. "Were done under the influence of the Old Gods." She stepped forward, placing a foreleg on one of Neltharion's own, lowering her head to look at him in the eye. "You were Neltharion for far longer than you were Deathwing. As the memory of your war fades, I will see to it you are remembered as the former."

He nodded, returning her gaze. "The things I have done can not be pardoned. I have defied the will of the Titans, slaughtered anyone not of my Flight. I have unwittingly allied with those we are sworn to contain, and brought you - all of - anguish through your children, stolen for experimenting." He gave out another bloody cough.

The Blue Aspect shook his head. "I have never known you as Neltharion, only as the one who nearly drove our Flight to extinction. But I have heard of how you were before. If this is truly you, then..."

The four Aspects standing around the one dying Aspect looked at each other for a moment, and an understanding seemed to pass between them. My Queen spoke as Neltharion's breathing began to slow. "After all you have done, all that you feel regret for, dear brother. We forgive you. For everything." A dull roll of thunder echoed throughout the scene.

The Black Aspect took a shaky breath, speaking in a softer voice as his life seeped out of him. "H-how? How can you forgive such... atrocities?"

This time, it was the Timeless one who answered, still of short breath from his injury. "Because all this time, no matter how much it was your own decision to do the things you did, you would never in all of history have done them without the influence of the Old Gods. What you did can not be blamed on you, even if it was your own choice."

Deathwing nodded weakly, looking at Nozdormu, then to Ysera, then Kalecgos, and finally to our queen. "What will... what will you do? Now that my madness has ended?"

Alexstrasza frowned, silent for a moment as if deep in thought. "Could we not heal you? You are your old self again. Things can be set right."

Deathwing - _Neltharion, I have to remember that _- barely shook his head. "No. I can never protect Azeroth. Not again. Even, even if you were to heal me, the fiends beneath the earth would simply turn me against you again. That was the folly of the Titans, to have me ward over the place where their greatest threats could influence me. My madness has spread to the rest of my Flight. Any that may remain in hiding can not be saved... they will serve the Old Gods to their dying breaths. What will you do?"

"We will contain the horrors unleashed," said the Green Aspect. "We will heal the scars of Azeroth's surface, drive the Twilight's Hammer into hiding, for they are too widely spread to ever be truly wiped out, and do what we have always done. Protect this world."

Neltharion didn't nod. He'd lost too much blood for that, and his voice was barely a whisper. "Then it is... my time. When I face my punishment... I'll always remember the times before. I'll be in peace, knowing this world is free from my... tyranny."

Alexstrasza nodded, standing up. "Then go knowing that we forgive you, and that we shall give you a burial in Dragonblight, with the honored ancients of our kind."

He didn't answer. Instead he simply looked up at the Red Aspect, and continued to do so until his brown eyes closed.

The twilight flame along his scales went out, and his head fell limply to the ground. A black-as-coal crystal rose out of his chest, hovering in the air until Kalecgos pulled it in telekinetically, a blue glow surrounding it as he did.

Neltharion stopped breathing.

For a moment all was silent. The ocean held its breath. The thunderclouds froze in place. Then the Lifebinder spoke, her voice low and sad, looking up at us. "Neltharion deserves a proper burial in the Dragonblight. That is one thing we will not deny him. We will return once we are done for the aftermath of Neltharion's madness." Without word, the Aspect of magic stepped forward, placing a foreleg on Neltharion's wing. The others all lightly touched the Black Aspect as a violet and silver glow engulfed him. The spell flared out, and all five Aspects vanished, gone to place the Black Aspect in Dragonblight.

The Cataclysm was over.

* * *

><p>As Verthelion and I sat in our true forms, waiting both for Go'el to awaken and for the Aspects to return, we lashed our tails slowly behind us. The clubs touched occasionally, sending a light jar up my tail. The Kingslayers, having given everything to the final battle, were spent, and sat around a makeshift campfire made of conjured wood in a spot where they cleared away Neltharion's now-untainted blood. The Old God stopped sending tentacles and Faceless ones to attack us; it knew that it had lost. Go'el was placed next to the fire as their druids healed him and poured medicine into him. The others just sat around, silently, staring into the campfire. Were they contemplating our strange alliance? Thinking of loved ones lost to the Cataclysm or other threats that had befallen Azeroth? Were they wondering what came next? I thought of the latter.<p>

Come to think of it, we stared into the fire as well. At least until I heard steps behind me.

Verthelion and I both turned around at the same time to see a black dragon walking towards us. His scales were covered in a thick black film, and the fluid on the sides of his head periodically flew off in chunks as tusks repeatedly flared out. "Did you know," Pallasion started, making all the conscious mortals turn their heads to him. "That the blood of the Faceless, in large quantities," he stumbled as he said this, letting me catch sight of the limp in his right hind leg. "Tastes remarkably similar to the brain of a raptor?" With that, he spat another glob of black fluid onto the ground. He shook his head, sending the blood flying off and revealing the deep indigo scales beneath.

Verthelion smiled. "Nice to have you with us. What took so long?"

He raised his tail and swung it through the air, cleaning it off. "Well, the Faceless stopped coming when I heard Deathwing die, and I took my time coming back, what with my leg and all." He gasped in false shock, placing a foreleg to his chest after he sat down. "You mean, you didn't bother to check and see if I was fine?" He flared his wings, partially cleaning them. "I'm insulted!" He turned away his head, but couldn't suppress a chuckle. "Where are the Aspects?" he asked suddenly, narrowing his pupils and looking back at us.

I sighed, remembering how Deathwing had become his uncorrupted self. "In Dragonblight, burying Neltharion. They'll be back once they're done," Verthelion said for me.

He turned his head to the side, extending a single rear tusk in the place of a raised eyebrow. "Neltharion? I thought he called himself - "

"Neltharion," Verthelion asserted forcefully. Looking back, I saw that the Liberality Confederacy had turned away from our conversation, returning to their own private worlds.

"Okay. So, what comes next? Deathwing has fallen, the world is saved... now what?"

Verthelion shook his head. "I don't know. The Aspects, when they return, will undoubtedly have some things to say to us. All of us. I guess we'll find out then. Until then, well, we wait."

I sighed. "It's finally over."

My mate nodded as Pallasion continued to clean himself. "It is. We teamed up with the other Dragonflights, the Kingslayers, came to Deathwing, boom boom, world's saved - "

"Stag's on us," I said with a smile, remembering the conversation I had with Fuluthlion about Algalon what seemed like an eternity ago, while I was still a whelp.

Verthelion chuckled. "Stag's on us," he echoed. I looked back at the campfire, sinking into my thoughts for a while before I noticed one of the mortals moving. Ellemayne got up, carrying both her bow and Thori'dal away, leaving the others behind, walking to the shoreline, where the waves had been dramatically reduced in power. She sat down on the sand, looking out to sea at the Maelstrom. Wordlessly, I got up and walked over to her, making a circle around the campfire and retracting to my mortal form next to the kaldorei.

"Hey." She looked up at me. "Mind if I sit?"

She shook her head. "No, I guess." I sat. "What are you doing here?"

I traced lines in the sand. "I wanted to talk with you. You do remember me, right? From Hyjal?"

She looked at me, moving Thori'dal from her lap to the sand next to her, away from me. "Yes, I do. My future self..."

"Saved my life, and as a result, the life of my mate."

"You were a drake back then."

I chuckled. "Yes, so I was." I picked up a peddle and tossed it at the whirling, seething torrent. It landed a few dozen meters out with a splunk. "I obviously grew up since. Just wondering, how are you? When your future self met Rom, he asked why she had Thori'dal. You kind of snapped at him." I stopped tracing lines in the sand and moved my hands into my lap.

Ellemayne began tracing her own lines absentmindedly over my own. "I imagine I did. We're all like family to each other. I can't help but feel like I've stolen from him." She snapped her eyes to my own. "What was that whole deal about, anyway? You and the Bronze?"

I shivered at the memories. "The Infinite had been after me for a while, since I lived in Stormwind. In Elwynn forest, I almost got killed by the Epoch Hunter. When I got to Hyjal to save Verthelion from Ysera, one of their drakes slowed me down so that he died before I could knock him out of the way of Ysera's poison breath." My eyes started to warm at the memory of that specific encounter. Ellemayne stopped tracing; her lines overlapping with mine produced a vague outline of the island we were on. "Chronormu took me to the Caverns of Time so that I could fix the damage. As you saw, I wasn't alone."

"My future self. I didn't wonder why I had Thori'dal, not after she told me who she was. I just didn't think anything of it." She leaned over, gently rubbing the bow's orange frame. "Rom died because of Deathwing. Our occupation is a dangerous one. The only reason none of us died to Arthas was because of Terenas and Tirion." I didn't question her about them. "I'm amazed we lost as few as we did to the Worldbreaker." She turned to me. "What will your mate's group do now? Now that Deathwing has fallen? What will you do? Where will you go?"

I shook my head. "To be honest, I don't know. The world is saved. The Hour of Twilight is averted, I can see that much in how the storm is quieting and the sea is calming. I imagine that when the Aspects return they will have something to say to us."

She nodded while she pressed her lips together. "Most likely. Besides you, the only members of your Flight I have ever seen hated all mortals with a burning passion. What makes you different?" I flinched lightly, remembering how many of my kind she must've killed.

"I wasn't different. We're all fooled into thinking you're the evil ones, and Deathwing is - I mean, was - righteous. I got lucky enough to have the opportunity to figure it out, and told the others."

She chuckled. "I wondered why my future self protected a Twilight drake. Guess I know now."

I spread out my hands a little ways, playing with an arc of twilight lightning between them, bathing me in a dark blue glow. I noticed Ellemayne's uncomfortable expression. "Oh come on, I'm not going to attack you. Because I am neither A, evil, nor B, suicidal."

"You can understand why I'm nervous, though."

I laughed lightly. "Yeah, I guess. So, what are you going to do? The rest of your guild, I mean?"

"Well, we're probably going to go help heal the world. There's lots of damage. After that, hopefully, we can rest for a change. Maybe there won't be a new imminent end-of-the-world thing to occupy our time. We can settle down, have families, but we're probably going to stay vigilant. After all, there are more Old Gods out there. We won't pretend for a second that Azeroth is completely safe, but hopefully it'll be okay for a few years yet."

I nodded. "That sounds like a good plan. Hey, try not to die for a few centuries, all right? I still need you to help my past self with the Infinite," I said with a smile, getting up.

Ellemayne nodded, looking back at the jagged stone spires surrounding the Maelstrom's epicenter. "Oh, I will." With that, I turned around, looking at the campfire amidst the darkening sky. No thunder echoed through the heavens. No lightning lit up the sea. The storm was over, and the clouds already began to thin, letting more of the dwindling sunlight pass through. I looked at the Kingslayers around the fire, who had taken up conversations with each other. Go'el had awoken, and a blood elven priest healed him. He took a red potion out of his robes and gave it to the exhausted orc.

I noticed Kolkna, who leaned against a rock. Her sword was next to her, blade imbedded into a patch of glass created by the World Shaman's lightning storm. I let out a large breath. She didn't know that the Twilight dragon she fought with was the same one who killed her companion. She didn't ever need to know, but I felt like I needed to tell her. I'd never be able to stop worrying about her if I didn't. And besides... she couldn't really kill me. Not when I could fade into the twilight realm in an instant.

I walked up to her. Nobody gave me any looks; they were either too tired to care, or genuinely trusted me. "Hey. Figured I'd talk to you about something."

She looked up at me, smiling. No, she clearly didn't remember me. "About what?"

"Well... I need to talk to you _alone_."

The smile melted off her face. She stood, and picked up her sword, the cracked glass crinkling as she pulled it out. The gesture was clear enough; she didn't fully trust me. "Let's go."

I led Kolkna a little ways from the campfire, far enough so that, if she decided to attack me, we wouldn't draw too much attention. I turned back around to her. "Kolkna, I just want to say, that, I am really, really, genuinely sorry for what I have done to you." I began to prepare a twilight barrier, just in case.

She raised an eyebrow, keeping her sword in one hand. "What you _have_ done to me? I don't remember ever seeing you before in my life."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Remember in Hyjal, when you and Frizzle captured a Twilight drake and delivered them to the World Tree?"

Kolkna hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I rememb - oh." She glared at me, a murderous glint developing in her eyes. "Oh. _You_." The hand on her sword began to elevate said weapon.

Before she could do anything else, like decapitate me, I quickly spoke up. "Before you do anything else, I really am genuinely sorry!"

She stopped. "_Sorry_. Then tell me, why exactly did you shoot me down?"

"Because if I _didn't_, you were going to kill Amanthe and I."

She growled. "Oh yes, your cultist friend."

I shook my head. "No, she's not a cultist. She never was." _Though she will be in the future. How else could her future self use twilight flame? _"We were friends. I _had_ to fire at you, or you would've killed me. How can you blame me for that?"

Kolkna's expression froze, like she listened to some voice in her head, arguing with it fiercely. She held that pose for one second.

Two.

Three.

Finally, she whispered. "I can't. I can't blame you for that. You fought Deathwing. You protected us from his tainted blood. Your mate helped us free Neltharion and, as a result, save Alexstrasza, and your friend held off the Faceless. You've proven your worth."

I let out a breath. So she wasn't going to kill me. "No hard feelings?"

"Oh, I still hold it against you." She resumed her glare. "I'm just not going to try and get my revenge for it."

The corner of my mouth twitched. "I can live with that." With, that I removed my illusion, looking down at Kolkna and giving a nervous smile, before taking off into the air. For a little time I soared above the island, looking down at it. Black blood created a river at the entrance to the cave. The fire shone with a vivid orange light, reflecting off the patches of glass scattered about to make it look like lava covered the island. Verthelion and Pallasion still sat in the same place, indigo scales tinted a light red-violet by the flames. I hovered over them, and let myself fall down, wings outstretched to slow my descent, landing so that Pallasion and I both surrounded Verthelion.

There was a while where nothing happened. Everyone just fell into silence, waiting for the Aspects to return. Finally, as the clouds began to fade, letting me see the starry expanse of the Circlet of the Titans for the first time in weeks, a shimmer of amber, azure, emerald, and ruby appeared at the end of the island, where Deathwing had taken his last breath.

The Aspects had returned.

Within moments, everybody stood, waiting in front of the assembled Dragon Aspects for what they had to say. My queen opened her jaws and spoke. "The Destroyer's reign of tyranny is over. The Hour of Twilight has failed to fall upon our world, and we owe it to you, champions." She motioned her head towards the Kingslayers, all in one group, behind Go'el and in front of us. "But Azeroth still bears many scars. The Twilight's Hammer still fights for the end of all things, still clutches at any opportunity to bring about the Hour of Twilight." She looked away from the mortals, but returned her gaze to them after a pause. "We shall take the charge of healing this world. Champions, we shall need your aid in repairing the cities of the Alliance and the Horde, which have suffered much damage. You, above all, have voices there, and shall be able to carry about the proper restorations."

Turaniles stepped forward and curtseyed to the Lifebinder. "It will be done, Dragonqueen."

She nodded. "After this, I feel as if you deserve a rest. You have been through much, and have earned a respite."

With that done, Ysera turned to Go'el, shifting to her mortal form. She strode forward, perfectly at ease around the three full-size Aspects behind her. "Go'el, son of Durotan." He knelt down, making her smile. "There is no need for that." He stood. "You have proven yourself time and time again. You represented Neltharion in order for us to defeat Chromatus. Though mortal, you have the power of an Aspect. The Titans sought to watch over the earth, to keep the Old Gods they chained there from surfacing. With Neltharion absent from this task, they have begun to surface. Which is why you, Go'el, will be the next Earthwarder of Azeroth."

The newly-appointed Earthwarder stumbled backward. "Lady Ysera - "

She shook her head. "This is your destiny. Nozdormu knows these things with absolute certainty." Hold on... wasn't it against his charge to divulge the events of the future? "The deep places of the earth must always be guarded. We would grant you immortality to let you see out this task indefinitely, but...?"

"Aggra," he responded.

This brought a smile out of the Green Aspect. "Yes, Aggra. We already have a plan to have a new Earthwarder when your time comes to pass, but we will not trouble you with that currently. You have enough to focus on." The other Aspects shrank to their mortal forms, and Pallasion, Verthelion, and I followed suit.

"M-my Lady. I don't know what to say, about this honor..."

Alexstrasza shook her head. "Do not say anything. You have long since become our equal." She looked our way. "There is just one more thing that we must address, but this is one that we dragons must discuss by ourselves." A cold chill ran down my spine at that. What could she mean by that? She held up her hands, arcane energy flowing along her palms, before she thrust them out, opening a portal to Wyrmrest. "The minions of the Old Gods have submerged back into the earth from whence they came, sensing Neltharion's defeat. We have won."

Nodding, the mortals slowly filed into the portal, and vanished to Wyrmrest. Go'el's expression was hard to read; I couldn't tell if he was anxious about his task, or honored, or even sad. Once they were gone, the portal closed, and we were alone with the Aspects, all in our true forms.

I gulped.

Kalecgos started. "With the fall of Deathwing, our kind faces yet another imbalance in power. Our sacred quantity, the number around which our world revolves, is five. The Titans created us with five Flights, and five Aspects. When Malygos fell, we Aspects were reduced to four. Which was partially why we needed to pick another." I saw the faintest hints of a smile on his face in this serious moment. Of course; it was said 'reduction to four' that led to his appointment as the new Aspect of Magic. "With Neltharion's fall, we once again fall to four Aspects. But this goes further. He himself said that any others of his Flight can not be saved from their corruption. And we have been _very_ thorough in our application of total war against the Black Dragonflight."

Nozdormu picked up the conversation in the Blue Aspect's pause. "The late Rheastrasza has managed to create an egg of the Black Dragonflight that is uncorrupted, however, it is more than likely to be the only one left of its Flight. Once they hatch, and mature, we could in theory grant them the Heart of the Earth, the magical artifact that gave Neltharion his powers, making them into an Aspect, much as Kalecgos was given the Heart of Magic. But for what? They would have no Flight to lead, they would be a solitary Aspect. And Go'el _is_ the Earthwarder. The Black Dragonflight is, for all intents and purposes, extinct. Not long ago, we had to appoint a new Aspect. Now, not only must we appoint a new Aspect, but also a new Flight in whole." With that, Nozdormu looked straight at Verthelion, waiting patiently for the discussion to continue. I wanted to ask where they were going with this, but it was not my position to speak.

It was Ysera who continued. "We have not discussed this yet; the most we have done is create a listing of Flights whom may join us in protecting Azeroth. The first we thought of, the only ones capable of aiding Azeroth, on basis of not being extinct or held inanimate by undeath and the loss of the Lich King, is the Netherwing Flight." The Green Aspect swung her head towards the others around her, including us. "What are your opinions on this?"

Kalecgos shook his head. "The Netherwing have always had a troubled past. They see themselves as abandoned and unloved on Draenor by Neltharion, and throughout their existence, have been used by others for their own means time and time again. Any attempt to coerce them into joining us to help safeguard our world would undoubtedly be seen by them as attempts to exploit them, no matter what arguments are given. Furthermore, their home is on Outland. To ask them to guard Azeroth would be to ask them to abandon the only home they've ever known. No, the Netherwing will never listen to us, not after what they've endured."

Verthelion made his voice known, but stayed relatively quiet and respectful. "What about the stone dragons in Deepholm that I've heard of?"

Alexstrasza contemplated this. "They could in theory be admitted, but have no members who are full grown, and only they are capable of receiving the power of an Aspect. Aeosera, their leader, also has, from what I have heard, regularly needs to be reminded of her position within Deepholm. Yet, that may be simply her ideals against the earth elementals. Then again, we do not know how her kind would react outside of Deepholm. They may find it extremely inhospitable. It is a risky endeavor, and having one of their drakes leave Deepholm to see, and have them possibly perish, would not sit well with the temperamental broodmother either. "

Ysera cocked her head sideways. "Which leaves your Flight as the successor to the Black Dragonflight."

My heart stuttered in my chest and my limbs went numb. _What?_

She continued. "The others of your Flight are nothing short of outright aggressive towards us. They are, by their actions, evil. However, I assume I am correct in thinking that you three were similar before you cast off the mental veil over your minds?" Verthelion nodded silently. "Therefor, it can be said that the other Twilight dragonkin, if freed, will be similar in mannerism to these three." I noticed that Ysera wasn't talking to us anymore, but rather to the other Aspects. "Of course, not all will. Some would be unable to accept being wrong, or seek out vengeance for a loss. These things are present in every Flight, in every society." _Alysra_. The traitor Green who freed me in Hyjal. "With them ignored, the remnants of the Twilight Flight, fifteen hundred from what I have been told, would mostly cease hostilities."

Kalecgos narrowed his eyes. "Now, wait a moment. No doubt that these three can be trusted. They've fought alongside us all, and without their aid we would have surely failed, but who's to say they are the average, and not the exceptions? Who is to say that, even if the others of their Flight are shown the truth, that they would become our allies, and not our enemies? If we appoint them to protect Azeroth, then such an occurrence would have drastic effects. Not to mention how young they _all_ are. Few, if any, should be more than whelps without their age acceleration."

Alexstrasza tapped a claw on the stone. "You raise a valid point. As good it would be to simply be able to trust the entirety of the Twilight Flight, such a thing is not possible. A problem extrapolated by their mental youth. Sister, what do you think?"

"We need a new Flight to succeed the Black Dragonflight," said Ysera. "We have already ruled out the Netherwing, and the stone dragons. The Twilight Flight is our best bet. I would be less concerned about their youth and potential continued hostility and more concerned about their power. They are specifically engineered - " That sent a cold chill down my spine, all the way to the tip of my tail. _Engineered_, like we were a war machine. We technically were engineered, but hearing it from an Aspect... " - to be the most powerful Dragonflight, to inherit the world after Neltharion eradicated us. They have already shown themselves to be several orders of magnitude more powerful than any other Flight, with their flame. Any betrayal would be catastrophic, however I do not feel these fears are warranted. The odds of not three, but seven dragonkin all being the exceptions to such a _powerful_ rule, in a Flight of fifteen hundred, is extremely unlikely. If it were just these three, they could be the exception, but the chances of seven, including the dragonspawn, all being the exceptions, after being from separate locations, is astronomical." Why was Ysera arguing _for_ us? When she had killed Verthelion and came to finish me, she had called us 'twisted, corrupted, heartless, monsters'. Then again, we had fought aside her.

And I _had _saved her life, taking the death-blast from Neltharion.

Nozdormu nodded. "Indeed, sister. Logic dictates that the Twilight Flight can be trusted. Past atrocities can not be held against them, given the conditioning they have been under. I say that they should be appointed to protect Azeroth."

"As do I," said the Green Aspect.

Kalecgos and Alexstrasza looked at each other, but relented. "As do I," both said simultaneously. Alexstrasza continued. "But what shall they protect on Azeroth?"

Nozdormu had an answer ready. "They shall not watch over anything on Azeroth, not in the sense that we do. Rather, they will watch over the corruptions in the world, keeping them contained. They have already shown to be able to track corruption through the twilight realm; if they didn't, we would not have tracked Neltharion to where he fell. They will, in effect, fight fire with fire, keeping watch over corruption that is present on Azeroth, making sure it does not escalate."

The Red Aspect nodded. "I see. So it will be done. The Twilight Flight is accepted into Wyrmrest." She looked our way, pulling us back into the discussion that we had been watching unfold in front of us. "Your charge will be to keep watch over the corruption in the world, making sure none of it gets out of hand."

Wait, _what?_ Was this actually happening? I must've passed out in the fight. No _way _that -

Verthelion bowed his head. "I understand." Following his example, Pallasion and I repeated his words and motions. Why would they ever do this?

My queen straightened up. "Now that _that_ is decided, there is one more thing that must be chosen. The Aspect for your Flight. The Heart of Earth can be converted, with the proper procedure, into a different power. Your Aspect must be from you three. You are the only adults who are not brainwashed, hence you are the only ones eligible." She turned her head over towards Pallasion. "Pallasion. Would you be qualified?"

He shook his head furiously. "N-no! Are you - I'm _acrophobic_. What kind of an Aspect can't fly?" I scoffed in my mind. What kind of _dragon_ can't fly? "No way it should be me."

The Aspects looked perplexed at the fact that Pallasion had a fear of heights, but neither said anything. Alexstrasza turned to me. "And what about you? Selriona."

My heart skipped a beat in my chest. M-me? Be an Aspect? Scenarios began to race through my mind at breakneck speed. Some of joy and success, some of tragedy and failure. Was I qualified for this? The power wouldn't get to me, right? Sure, I had power over Pallasion with twilight prisons, but that was all in good fun, and I could reel it in to not go power-mad, surely. But _fifteen hundred_ of us? Out of the ten of us that we started the journey to Wymrest with, only one betrayed us. Going along with that, I'd have to lead 1,350 others. The number made me dizzy. I didn't even lead the ten of us to Wyrmrest, Verthelion did that. An Aspect had to be a leader, above all, since that's what they are.

Nearly fourteen hundred people, dependent on me... the idea made me sick. I shook my head. "N-no. I'd never be able to lead, not so many people. I couldn't."

Every head turned towards Verthelion, who shuffled nervously. "Okay, I see where this is going," he said. "But, but - "

"Verthelion, face it. You did sort of lead us to Wymrest. You convinced Vajarn, you were the target for rust-poisoning, you walked at the front of our group, AND you were the one who showed our queen that we can be trusted."

"But - "

Pallasion cut him off. "And face it, we aren't qualified. Selriona says she couldn't lead so many, and who ever heard of an Aspect who can't fly? It has to be you. Don't understate yourself."

He took a deep breath, looking up at Alexstrasza. "Okay. Guess it's me, isn't it? I accept the duty."

Kalecgos breathed out a little orb of arcane energy. It condensed into a sphere, out which fell the black crystal that rose out of Deathwing when he died, hovering at our eye-level. The Blue Aspect spoke. "This is the Heart of the Earth. Its power is to allow the recipient to be the Earthwarder, a task that Go'el already has undertaken. As such, it must be... modified. Channel your energy onto it. That will change it to the form of power needed." He looked my way. "Much like the capacitor that she holds."

Wordlessly, Verthelion nodded. I saw him begin to cast a spell, and a twisting beam of twilight energy shot out of his maw, crashing into the Heart of the Earth, writhing around it in thick coils before being absorbed. Slowly, the hue began to change. The crystal slowly became lighter, changing color until it was a dark blue, and then it gave out a spherical pulse of twilight energy. Verthelion cut off his beam, and Alexstrasza nodded. "It is done." She moved a foreleg, red energy glowing around the crystal, moving it towards Verthelion.

The Heart of Twilight.

Kalecgos winced. "The process of receiving it will not be pleasant. Fair warning."

Verthelion didn't react. Instead he kept his eyes trained on the hovering crystal, coming ever closer and closer to him, until it came to a stop, just touching his chest scales, his breathing steadily accelerating. When it stopped, violet beams of energy exploded out of the ground around Verthelion, shadow energy writhing around him. Pallasion and I both took a step back as the beams twisted into him, entering his body, the Heart of Twilight slowly shrinking. He roared, his body growing... and growing... and growing, until he stood at eye-level with the other Aspects. The lights faded. The crystal was gone.

Verthelion took deep breaths, _towering _above me. Did that really just happen? Chronormu's words from when she first took me the Caverns of Time echoed in my mind. _'You see, Verthelion becomes... somewhat... important later, let's leave it at that._' Oh yes, important indeed. An _Aspect?_ They would be important to save. Were we really one of the guardians of Azeroth, along with the four major Flights? It seemed so unrealistic, so dream-like. I wondered again if I had passed out during the final battle with Neltharion and this was all a dream. But no, if this was a dream Nalestrasza would be insulting me right about now.

My mate - my _Aspect_ - took a breath. "Okay then." The other Aspects still looked a little uneasy, and I knew why. We were the most powerful Dragonflight. Now that we had an Aspect, none of them, save perhaps Nozdormu, would be able to best him in single combat should he choose to attack. But he wouldn't do that, it wasn't in his nature to do such a thing, and no way he was simply 'waiting for their guards to lower'. After all, how could we _possibly_ have known that this would happen? "Okay. Let's see. First things to do. First things..."

Alexstrasza shook her head. "For now, let us return to Wyrmrest. You and the others of your Flight may decide on what you will do there." Kalecgos opened a portal, and the four Aspects shifted to their mortal forms. We followed suit. Verthelion's violet eyes, I noticed, now gave off a slight glow, one that seemed to be slowly, but steadily, increasing. The others left, leaving Pallasion, Verthelion and I alone on the island.

I smiled. "Congratualions, _Aspect_," I said. If Verthelion was the Aspect, wouldn't that make me the Prime Consort?

He chuckled nervously. "Right. You two did this to me," he said with mock accusation.

Pallasion gave him a reassuring grin. "Relax. You'll do fine. We'll help you."

"Yes. Thanks. Titans know I'll need it. We're not out of the woods yet. We need to find our Flight a home, get established, find the ones in hiding..."

"But we've gotten through the worst of it," I said. "I mean, the world is saved. Our Flight is officially a part of the five guardian Dragonflights. You're an _Aspect_, for Titan's sake!"

"Yes, I know," he said. "Come on, let's go. We still have a few small things to take care of." With that, we stepped through the portal.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**

**Story's not over yet. Still a few things left to do.  
><strong>


	46. Chapter 46:Politician

**Di****sclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita!**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

We found Vajarn, Turliona, and Murdonia within minutes of returning to Wyrmrest. They were all in a single alcove in their mortal forms, having the meaningless, somewhat philosophical conversations that inevitably arise with boredom and anxiety. As we walked, I noticed Verthelion's form fading as he shifted partway into the twilight realm, his eyes now almost a pure glowing indigo, no pupil or the like. The dragonspawn General looked up as we entered the room.

"You're back!" he said. "I'm guessing that means..."

Verthelion nodded. "He's dead. Well and truly dead."

I noticed something was off. "Where's Sheralion?"

The moment I said this, Turliona scowled, and Vajarn's eyes narrowed as he spoke. "Feraliona never betrayed us. It was Sheralion. He implanted obedience runes in her, _he's_ the one who told her to poison you, Verthelion. It was him all along."

Turliona shook her head. "I messed up. It was my fault. I told him the plan for defeating Deathwing. I trusted him, he was my mate, and he betrayed us. He's dead now, though. He won't be ruining anything else."

Pallasion raised an eyebrow. "_Sheralion?_ It was him all along?"

Murdonia nodded. "He tried to kill me. What more proof do you need? Luckily there was nobody around to be alarmed."

I shook my head. "What matters is that he's dead, and in spite of it all, so is Death - Neltharion."

Vajarn turned to Verthelion. "You seem... different."

My mate took a deep breath, arcing small bits of twilight lightning across his fingertips, more powerful in those small quantities than the ones I had used in my spar at Wyrmrest. "No surprise there. We've been chosen to be one of the five main Dragonflights. We are _officially_ protectors of Azeroth, and I've been chosen as the Aspect."

This made the Vajarn, Murdonia, and Turliona start. Murdonia stuttered. "You? Us? What?"

He smiled at his sister's scattered speech. "I'm still getting over it too. Our charge is to watch over the corrupt things in the world and keep them contained. Still a few things that we need to get done, first."

Pallasion turned to him. "Like what?"

"Well, first of all we need a _home_ for our Flight." He held up a hand and began to count on it. "The Blues have Coldarra, the Greens have the Emerald Dream, the Bronze have the Caverns of Time, and the Reds have who-knows-where. Our home was to be the Twilight Caverns in the Bastion, but they don't even _exist_ anymore. So that's going to be the first order of business. Not to mention finding the others of our kin that have hidden." He rubbed his temples, briefly closing his glowing eyes before opening them again. "Okay. Here's what we'll do. Divide and conquer. Pallasion, Murdonia, Vajarn, Turliona. You four look for the others of our flight that are in hiding. Amass several more into your group so that you'll have persuasive power, and send any others towards us. I'd say maybe fifty would be a good number before you send the rest to our home. Selriona and I will go to the place I have in mind and start setting up."

I scratched my head. "And what place _do_ you have in mind?"

He turned to me, smiling. "Grim Batol. Think about it. It's the birthplace of our Flight, and we are the _only_ ones it holds any good memories for. The dwarves were driven out by self-inflicted dark magic, Alexstrasza was held captive there, all in all, we are the only ones for whom Grim Batol means _anything_ good. It's only fitting that our home is the place where we were created."

I nodded. "That's a very good idea. So, should we, uh, get going?"

He shook his head. "Yes, we should." He looked to Pallasion. "Search south first. Places that are warm. After all, who'd want to hide in a frigid wasteland like Northrend?" he said with a light grin.

Pallasion returned the grin. "All right, I've got it. We'll search top-down Eastern Kingdoms first, then Kalimdor, repeating this several times until I feel we're not going to find anybody else. We'll check Northrend too."

Vajarn nodded from besides him. "That sounds like a good plan. Shall we embark?"

"I'll open a portal for you, to Tirisfal," I said, remembering the anchor point I had placed there so that we could reach Northrend. "Come on, let's go outside. I'll open the portal there." With that, we left the alcoves, walking out of the base of Wyrmrest, not stopping until our feet crunched on the ice.

We all made a circle, still in our mortal forms. "Until next time," I said, placing a twilight portal into my capacitor. Like before, the arcane energy strained to replicate the spell, and just before it finished, I set it to bring them to Tirisfal. They stepped in, leaving Verthelion and I by ourselves. It was a sort of unspoken agreement that we would fly to Grim Batol. "So, what are you doing in the twilight realm?"

"I'm going to go contain that Naaru. I can place it into the twilight realm, and there it'll regenerate by itself."

I smacked myself. "I am such an idiot! That thing completely slipped my mind." I removed my hand from my forehead. "Wait, how can you separate yourself like that?"

He shrugged. "Guess it's one of the new things I can do. I feel literally no strain, and my twilight self is already in the Borean Tundra. I can fly _fast_ in the twilight realm."

"Yeah, that's very fast." I began to dissolve my illusion, slowly expanding until I was in my true form. "Shall we go?" I asked, looking at Verthelion's still-human form.

"Yeah. We have a long flight ahead of us," he said, unraveling into his true form, much larger than me. He lifted himself onto his hind legs, flapping and taking to the air, with me following suit. A couple dragons swerved out of the way in panic, but we paid them no mind. Within minutes of flying (With me needing to shift into the twilight realm for the strength to keep up with Verthelion's longer wingspan) Wyrmrest faded from view.

Our journey to Grim Batol had begun.

* * *

><p>The humidity of the Wetlands stung my eyes, but I blinked it away. Multiple signals pulsed along my head, the signals of the Red Flight within Grim Batol. I knew for a fact that some of our Flight remained in Grim Batol, hiding, using the massive labyrinthine tunnels to avoid capture. The soft pat of our human feet on the stone floor echoed throughout the corridors, since there wasn't enough space for either of us to use our true forms. Peering into the physical realm through my illusion, I saw there were none of our kind here, save for Verthelion, who only had his physical self with us, his twilight self flying around Azeroth, looking for the Naaru.<p>

A chattering sound reached my ears, and I looked at a crack in the ceiling to see a malformed face peering down. I gently tapped the capacitor around my neck within the twilight realm, and the trogg ran from my sight. As we left behind the shattered hallway of Grim Batol, most of it collapsed into a cave, we stopped.

Before us stretched a vast structure. A central structure reached down farther than I could make out, lost to the glow of some light. Tunnels branched out all around me, and I could sense Reds of all kinds; dragonspawn, drakes, dragons, wyrms... and eggs.

Verthelion turned to me and asked, "How do you want to do this?"

I pulled myself out of the twilight realm. "How about we first scope them out, then we pull them into the twilight realm to protect them, tell them the truth, then go tell the Red Flight?"

He nodded. "They'll probably be in one main group. Safety in numbers." He shivered. "Just found the Naaru. Give me a moment."

I wanted to ask what he was doing, when suddenly he vanished from the physical realm. Out of panic, I peeked into the twilight realm, finding him there.

"How did you - "

"I switched places with my selves. Kind of like teleporting." He grinned, and after a few moments spoke again. "Okay, it's contained now." With that, he reappeared in the physical realm, now fully with me. Despite the Naaru being little more on our journey than a footnote, and the means by which we found Pallasion and Murdonia, I couldn't help but think that the very fact that there was one meant something more. But now wasn't the time. We had a Flight to rebuild.

I placed both my twilight and physical hands in his. "And you didn't even need to bother the Kingslayers!"

He laughed lightly. "Yeah. Come on, let's conduct a sweep."

"Divide and conquer, or...?"

"Are you kidding? We'll get lost in _seconds_."

"Right. Well, let's go this way," I said, pointing right. I sunk into the twilight realm until I was but an illusion in the physical realm, and my mate did the same. Soon, we started our long and exasperating journey through the maze of Grim Batol, using the right-hand rule to keep ourselves from getting _entirely_ lost. Every now and then our physical eyes saw a Red dragonspawn at their post, ready to sound an alarm, and we briefly sunk entirely into the twilight realm to evade them, lest they sound an alarm and a whole mess of complications arise. I marveled at the structure of Grim Batol; entire rooms filled with metals mortals would find precious, like gold. Faucets of magma, spilling from the roof hundreds of meters above me. It took my breath away with its majesty, even more than Wyrmrest did. With Wyrmrest, you could see everything right away, but Grim Batol twisted around so much, new wonders constantly revealed themselves.

And this was to be my - _our_ - home. After so much worrying, after spending such a large portion of my young life trying to reach some invisible finish line, here we were. Officially part of the guardian Dragonflights. We had a home. We were going to _survive_. I looked at Verthelion as we walked, hands intertwined. The battle against D - Neltharion had been the tipping point. The true point of no return. And now it was past. All we had left to do was pick up the pieces, and save who we could of our Flight. How long had it been? Over two years. Over two years since I'd seen the truth. Out of a life of five years, that's a lot. But as my immortal lifespan stretched out, the time I spent allied with the Destroyer would become a footnote. Verthelion would be an Aspect for much longer than not; the things that were so unusual and mind-boggling to me now would soon become the norm. I can't find any problems with that at all.

"Up ahead," said Verthelion, jerking me out of my thoughts. "Look, the others. Up ahead. In that atrium. Probably used as a dining hall when the dwarves lived here."

Looking at the room the corridor had opened up into, I had to agree. It spanned incredibly high, wide and long, and I could still smell the lingering scent of ale. Broken tables littered the floor, covered in scorch marks and tinted violet in some places. Tattered and torn paintings of various humanoids hung around the wall, decrepit and disheveled, not one of them not leaning at an angle. I could imagine the place in its prime, dwarves sitting around, consuming the meat of various native animals, drinking, singing, all the things I'd seen during my oh-so-brief stay in Kharanos multiplied by a factor of a thousand.

Instead, drakes and dragonspawn huddled around. A few drakonids watched the entrances, except for the one we emerged out of, which made me conclude that must've been one of their exits. The smell of troggs littered the air, no doubt the sustenance used. Even so, it was clear that they weren't enough. I could see the ribs of half the drakes there, and the dragonspawn's weapons appeared much lighter than they should've been. They huddled in groups, watching the entrances where the Red Flight could break through, a few watching the emergency exits, weakening muscles ready to pounce and save themselves. I sensed the constant buzzing of the Red Flight's forces outside the chamber, dragonspawn scouts searching for the Twilight dragons. All in all, there were maybe two hundred and fifty of our Flight. The few that saw us enter, three drakes, immediately sunk to their forelegs, recognizing our scent as adults.

Verthelion walked up to one of them and asked her, "Where may I find the leader of this group?"

She got up and pointed a claw towards a drake in the middle of the room, one whose horns were slightly chipped. "Over there, Perseliona. Are you here to help us escape the Red Flight?"

Verthelion smiled kindly. "In a way."

Both of us walked towards Perseliona, sitting on her haunches and eyes closed. "Perseliona?" I asked.

She turned around. "What? Hang on, I haven't seen you two before." She sniffed the air, and a grin spread on her fangs. "We're saved, aren't we? You're going to help us get out, and..."

Verthelion shook his head. "It's not that simple. Why aren't you all in the twilight realm?"

Perseliona groaned. "The blasted Reds. They placed wards all around Grim Batol. We can't open a portal. Maybe you're strong enough to circumvent them, but for us, no. What do you mean it's not that simple? We just fly out, blasting any Red on our way - "

"Like I said," Verthelion repeated. "It's not that simple. Call everyone over here. we'll pull you all into the twilight realm. After that, I have some things to talk to you all about."

She nodded. "All right, everyone gather around! Now!" Within moments, all of our kind formed a ring around the three of us. I extended my magic, covering the area and pulling everyone into the twilight realm. It was a little difficult, but not monstrously.

Verthelion sighed. "All right. Sit down. We have some things to tell you, and they aren't going to be easy to accept. Selriona, can you start dispelling their link to the Old Gods?"

I nodded, and the two of us got to work.

* * *

><p>Everyone sat in silence as Verthelion concluded his argument. Every counter-argument had been given, every objection heard, and everyone had been freed from the Old Gods. They knew our Flight had been accepted, what charge we had, how we had been fooled. Some asked what made Verthelion qualified to be an Aspect, or rather, what made him more qualified than them. But every attempt at falsifying our view had been blasted dead by us in seconds. They all sat in silent contemplation, thinking it over no doubt. How many of them would not help? How many would stay on the side of Neltharion? How many would we be forced to kill? Finally, Perseliona said, "It... makes sense. I don't want it to make sense, but every word of it makes sense! You're right. We have no reason to continue being against the mortals and the other Dragonflights. Especially now that Deathwing has fallen. What else would we have to do?" She turned back to Verthelion. "What do we do now... Aspect?"<p>

"We are going to go speak with the Red Flight, tell them what has happened. I do not think they know of what has transpired, so we will inform them. Stay here. We will return to bring you out once they will no longer attack."

She nodded. "All right. Better than running around here, starving to death."

I smiled at my mate. "Well, we better get going." I began to walk out towards a corridor, shifting into the physical realm to sense the Red Flight and use them as my compass out of the labyrinth.

"Well, that went a lot better than expected," I said once we were out of earshot of the two others.

Verthelion turned his head to look at me. "Yeah. I mean, two-fifty to two? I expected a lot worse."

"I imagine they were getting desperate," I said, kicking a loose pebble with my feet. "All right, so. Now that that's out of the way, how are we going to tell that to the Red Flight?"

"Well, as long as we stick together, they can't exactly _hurt_ us. We'll ask to see their leaders, and convince the two of them." As he said this, I focused back on my sensing of the Red Flight. All in all, there were maybe two wyrms.

"Two wyrms. I bet they're the leaders. Want to split up? I take one, you the other?"

He considered this for a moment. "Hmm, let's get there first. See the situation."

I nodded in agreement, turning my head back towards the winding maze of corridors sprawled out infront of us, stairs up and down, fountains of molten rock, obsidian sculptures of things I couldn't make out, the details having eroded. All around me, I sensed the movements of the Reds, slowly trying to box in the Twilight dragons now out of their reach.

Slowly, but surely, we made our way out. The vast central column of Grim Batol came into view, and we set out to find the leaders, who were very close together. I looked down. "They're all the way down there. Shall we?"

He nodded. "Oh, this won't be conspicuous _at all_." With that, we both released our illusions, and jumped into the depths of Grim Batol. Heated winds swirled around us as we flapped lightly to slow our fall, landing with a loud _crash_ on a stone bridge, which groaned under our weight as we shifted back to our mortal forms. Five ruby-scaled dragonspawn in front of us whirled around at the sudden noise, weapons and spells at the ready. A volley of fireballs flew out, but I raised a twilight barrier around myself, absorbing them, and they simply passed through Verthelion as he rapidly manipulated the twilight realm.

"Hold your fire! We just want to talk," he said.

The assembled dragonspawn growled, but didn't move. The one in the middle spoke. "We are not to allow _any_ of your kind to pass."

I sighed. "We need to speak to your two leaders. We know that they're this way. We can sense them. Look," I said, taking a lazy step forward, barrier still strong. "Our Flights are allied. Don't believe me? Ask Alexstrasza. I'd rather we didn't have to force our way through, but this is urgent, and it wouldn't exactly make us look good. So please, just let us pass." To emphasize this, I let a few bolts of twilight lightning arc from my hands into the ground.

They shook their heads, and another volley of fire flew at me. I absorbed it, and sunk into the twilight realm, speaking with Verthelion's twilight self. "Guess we just have to 'sneak' past them."

His twilight self solidified as he sunk in fully. "Agreed." With that, we started sprinting through the corridors, determined to reach the place we had sensed the two wyrms at in a reasonable time. Within minutes, we reached a large hemispherical chamber, large enough for several dragons to be comfortable. A massive fire crackled at the end; a forge.

We shifted out of the twilight realm to find two Red adults sitting side by side.

Verthelion cleared his throat. "If we may have a word with you two?"

Both whirled around in an instant. The male growled, baring his fangs, and the female took a deep breath, no doubt for a flame breath, smelling our energies.

We both released our illusions, and they took a step back when they saw how my mate was nearly twice their size. I couldn't help but smile at that. "Calm down," my mate said. "We just want to talk."

They relaxed a little, but still held aggressive stances. The male snapped, "About what, Twilight?"

Verthelion looked towards me. "Do you want to talk to her?" He motioned to the other Red, who had taken in air for a fire breath.

I nodded. "Sounds good." I looked to her. "Come on, I need to talk to you. This is _very_ important."

She growled. "And how do I know you won't attack me?"

I rolled my eyes, clicking my front claws along the stone floor. "If we had the intention to attack you, you would already have died. I mean, honestly." Walking out of the room, we contracted to our mortal forms. Obviously my 'if we wanted to kill you you'd be dead' point had taken out her will to fight. As we came back to the central chamber, I turned to her, returning to my true form. "Come on, fly with me." I knew where I was headed. I could sense the Red eggs there, and given this place's history, there would be others there as well.

She also released her illusion, and the two of us flew up, with me keeping protective spells around me in case she chose to attack. Soon, we arrived near the top, and walked down a few ramps to an enormous room. In the twilight realm, I could see drafts of purple mist, Old God corruption, wafting around in the breeze. Something had been here. Something big. Red claw marks were burned into the ground, far thicker than anything I could make. Verthelion was large enough to do something like _that_, though. Eggs filled the chamber. Dozens of them. A furnace burned near the back, and the two rows of eggs stretched back to it. The ones closer to the blaze were red, with spikes protruding from the opaque shells. The others were all a dark violet and translucent. If I looked closely, I could see the whelpling inside, being tormented by the whispers of the Old Gods.

I sighed, looking at them. "None of us are controlled. By the Old Gods, I mean." I looked back to her, looking at me quizzically. "We're changed in body, and afterwards the Old Gods make us believe that you are wrong, that your Flight must die, for being corrupt." I shifted to my mortal form, and she followed my example, for some reason, turning into a blood elf. "We have a spell placed on us. It lets the Old Gods speak to us no matter where on Azeroth we are, so that they can keep us in check. I've figured out how to dispel it, though." I walked over to one of the Twilight eggs, kneeling next to it and gently placing the palm of my hand on it, looking at the whelping who stared back at me. I looked closely, and dispelled it, freeing it from the whispers.

Looking even closer, I saw another spell woven onto them. It was a 'countdown' spell. From examination, it worked via an IF-THEN line of magic, so that if they hatched, they would temporarily become far, far more violent. Like Black whelps. This made my fury rise. I had thought, when I hatched, that it was my instincts telling me to fight my siblings, but no. It was this spell, making us behave like Neltharion's flight did. And it made horrifying sense, too. We were in a war. In a war, only the best were needed. But the fact that they played with our emotions like that, like we were their playthings!

I looked over at the dozens of Red eggs, and saw another spell on them, one that would delay their hatching until they could be... converted. Both the enraging spell and the hatch-delay appeared easy enough to dispel, but it made my anger simmer. I clenched my hands, blue smoke rising off of it.

Then I relaxed. "I'm sorry, I just thought about some things." I turned back to her. "Should've started with this first, but, um, introductions. I'm Selriona."

She nodded. "Velastrasza. I command the forces here. What do you two want with us?"

I shook my head. "Not with you. With Grim Batol. You see, Verthelion, our friend Pallasion, and I, helped to defeat Dea - Neltharion."

She stumbled back. "You _what?_ Your Flight serves _under_ him!"

"Because we thought he was righteous. Of course, I figured out the truth, and told a few others, like my mate, Verthelion. So we helped kill him, and, well, the other Aspects saw fit to bring us into the five guardian Dragonflights. We were given an Aspect."

She looked confused for a few moments. Then her face paled. "The one you were with. He's alone with - "

"Before," I said, putting up a hand. "You go on, afraid that he's killed him, keep in mind that if he wanted to attack, he would have done so right away, since there would be no point in delaying. All right?"

Velastrasza calmed a little. "How can we trust you? Why should I believe you?"

I shrugged, before I turned around and started freeing more of the unhatched whelplings from the Old Gods, in addition to removing the enraging spell. "Well, if you don't believe me, you can go ask any of the other Aspects. We came here because Verthelion decided Grim Batol should be our Flight's home."

Velastrasza narrowed her eyes. "Why should you have Grim Batol?"

"Because we are the only ones for whom it holds good memories. The dwarves were driven out by the Dark Irons, the old Horde suffered a horrid defeat here, and I don't feel I need to say what happened to your Flight." Her eyes flickered to the claw marks along the chamber. "But our Flight started here. This is our hatchplace. We've already found the survivors, and we've brought them over to the truth. How many of them do not believe it, but pretend to, I do not know. I hope those people are few, and if possible, nonexistent."

She shook her head. "You ask us to just, forgive your Flight? After all the lives you have ended?"

"And what about all _our_ lives? Look, we both know that if we want to prove ourselves, then we have a lot to do. And besides. How close are we to the Vermillion Redoubt? You can easily keep track of us, since you don't trust is. To be honest, you don't have any reason. But like I said, if you don't _believe_ me, you can ask our Queen." I turned back to the eggs. "The eggs of your Flight, we will send back to Wyrmrest. Those of our Flight will have any damage done by the Old Gods reversed." I looked back to her. "Will you allow us this? Think of it as an exercise in faith."

The Red sighed. "I will have to ask the Lifebinder. But for the time, yes, we will pull out of Grim Batol. But we _will_ be watching you." Crimson mist began to swirl around her, until she stood in her true form. I released my own illusion. "Let us return to Gamistrasz."

I nodded, and took to the air, flying back to Verthelion. I wondered how he had fared with 'Gamistrasz'. Probably better than me, having the intimidation factor working, whether he wanted it to or not. Seeing the eggs had shaken me somewhat. I'd been filled with so many types of magic while in my shell, and I never even knew. First the hatching delay spell, then the Old God communication spell, and then the spell that made me fight my siblings. It made me sick. What were we to the Twilight's Hammer? The new Flight to inherit the world, or just a tool to manipulate as they saw fit?

_Shut up, why do you care what the cultists think of you?_ I scolded myself.

We found Verthelion soon enough, staring uneasily at Gamistrasz, both in their true forms. He turned around quickly when he heard me approach, smiling warmly. "Hi," he said. "How'd it go?"

Velastrasza pressed her wings flat against her back, a worried expression on her face. "Gamistrasz, are you all right?"

"Couldn't be better. Verthelion's pulled up a few... interesting things for me to consider. Should we...?"

She nodded. "Yes. Selriona here openly invited me to ask our Queen if I didn't believe her. That obviously counts for something. Let's call off the search and head back to the Redoubt. We should tell Lirastrasza about this." A smile spread on her face. "Oh, she is going to _flip_." With that, the two Reds left us, contracting to their mortal forms in the corridor.

I turned to Verthelion. "Well, that's done and over with. Should we go tell the others it's safe?"

He shook his head. "No, no not yet. Let's at least give them time to leave the place."

I chuckled nervously, scratching at the ground. "Oh yeah. That would be a good idea." It was done.

We had a home.

* * *

><p>"I'm going to sleep."<p>

Verthelion stood from where he sat in his human form, contemplating how to reach another clutch of Red eggs hidden away by the twisting corridors. The others of our Flight had been roaming freely for roughly five hours now, most going outside to have a proper hunt for the first time in months. The Red Flight had left Grim Batol, leaving hardly a trace. If everything went well, we would send the first clutch of the Red Dragonflight's eggs back to Wyrmrest via portal tomorrow. "How so?" he asked.

"I haven't slept in a week. If I don't now, then I'll be feeling it tomorrow."

He nodded. "Good idea. Maybe I'll turn in soon as well. It's been a long week. But of course, I'll wait for you to wake up. No sense in both of us being asleep at the same time if the others come back."

"See you in twenty-one hours." With that, I turned around, and jumped off the ledge, catching myself as I unfurled to my true form, rising to find a ledge I could sleep in. Soon enough, I found one just large enough to accommodate me, and laid down in it.

It had a great view of Grim Batol. The fiery light of magma far below, the twisting corridors that, while incomprehensible to me now, I would eventually know like the back of my paw. This was my - no - _our_ home. Things could only get better from here on out. I closed my eyes, and sank into a blissful, almost day-long sleep.

Instantly, I felt myself wake up, and looked around. I noticed immediately that something was wrong. For one, the ledge I slept on was much roomier, and second, the magma glowed a stark green.

"Well well well, if it isn't the great Prime Consort," said my voice from the left. I turned my head to see, who else, but Nalestrasza.

I frowned. "Oh. You. Of course. And that would mean that I'm dreaming."

"No, you don't say?" She chuckled, and we both stood. "But really, I feel congratulations are in order."

I extended one of my rear tusks. "What?"

"Well, if either you, Pallasion, or Verthelion did not show up to the battle with Neltharion, then he would've won and the world would've been destroyed. Granted, same with the Aspects, but that is to be expected. So, really, you saved the world, and all the life on it." She walked over and patted me with a wing. "Good for you."

"What do you want with me, Nalestrasza?" I asked.

"I'm just happy for - "

"WHOA!" I jumped back, alarm beating in my ribcage. "Are you feeling all right? Are you sick? Can a subconsciousness even get sick? I mean, _you_? Happy? The last time _that_ happened - "

"Was the last day you spent in Verthelion's cave. Yes, I know." She chuckled, sending chills down my spine. "But look at all that you've done! Just five years old, an unbelievably short length of time for our kind, and even for most mortals, and you have single clawdedly saved your Flight. Without you, nobody would ever have realized the truth behind the Old Gods, and so nobody could have spread it to everybody else, and they would've stayed under the orders of the Old Gods forever. Deathwing would not have fallen, since his corruption was too potent, and there would be nobody to help Neltharion interfere with his brainwaves. The Hour of Twilight would have fallen, and everyone would be dead! So congratulations, my alternate self! You've saved the world."

"You're overstating things. I didn't do it by myself, and others played a much larger role than I did," I stated.

Nalestrasza shrugged her wings. "So what if I'm overstating? I'm _you!_ Of course I'm going to flatter you, and by extension of logic, myself!" She pulled herself into a sitting position, head high and noble, eyes closed. "I mean, really now!" I got a smile on my fangs. "Oh no, don't even - "

"So does that mean all the times you've called me unintelligent, you've been insulting yourself?" Did she let herself fall into that trap, or did I truly get her? I'd never know for certain.

She huffed. "Shut up." With that, the dream melted away, Grim Batol being replaced by a place high in the sky, the sun at its apex, signifying noon, with thick, swirling clouds beneath me, concealing the land below. I flew onwards continuously, and when I looked at myself, I noticed I was a whelp. I hovered through the air, until a 'loop' of clouds came over me. I felt the dream ripple, and I was a drake. Looking around, I saw that the clouds were much more hostile, frothing, seething, and churning below me, an ominous red light illuminating their base. After flying some more, I passed through another ring, and became an adult. The clouds below me boiled, thrashed at the air, and the source of the brightened red light roared. And then it faded. The clouds were calm again. They wafted gently on self-produced breezes.

I chuckled. "Philosophical much, Nalestrasza? A metaphor for my life?"

Said Red dragon materialized next to me, flying parallel. "Oh wow, you caught on. So, I'm guessing things will be getting much better from now on?" she said, changing the subject.

"I've thought that before. You'd know; you hear my thoughts!"

She smiled. "I know. Just testing you. So, think you can keep up?" She reared up mid-air, and dashed away, sailing through the clouds.

I chuckled, knowing she and I were matched for speed. This was a contest as to who could control my dreams more. I teleported next to her, willing the wind to be at my back and in her face, but it struggled to respond as the two of us struggled for control.

Nalestrasza zipped forward, in spite of me winning the wind-control, and every time I teleported myself next to her, she was just as far ahead of me.

"I'm _always_ one step ahead of you, Selriona! I'm in a good mood. Don't waste it. After all, we're going to have to put up with each other for the rest of your life!"

I groaned. "That long?"

She turned around, back to the ground, but still moved forward. She shrugged. "Don't blame me. Kolkna's the one that made you drink the Nightmare elixir, and one of the side effects of that is an alternate personality. Really, it's her fault if anything."

I growled, forcing Nalestrasza to be behind me as I raced her towards some uncertain goal. "KOLKNA!"

With that, I made a bolt of lightning strike Nalestrasza, just as I woke up to see Verthelion's head as he hovered next to the ledge I slept on. "Good dreams?" he asked.

I groaned, pulling myself to my feet, looking at the faint activity throughout Grim Batol as the others of our Flight returned from their hunt. There was a lot to do. "It could go either way," I answered.

There was a lot to do, keeping our Flight safe, and carrying out the charge given to us by the other Aspects.

But it would all be worth it.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. Not over yet, though.<strong>


	47. Chapter 47:Patron

**Dis****claimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, huge, HUGE thanks to my beta Dusty the Umbravita.**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I looked down at the assembled Red dragon eggs, scheduled to be sent via portal to Wyrmrest. There were no others in the entirety of Grim Batol, that much we could sense, and the eggs of all three other Flights had been sensed, retrieved and returned long ago. Months had passed since Grim Batol became the home of our Flight, and since then our numbers in the area had gone from two hundred fifty to roughly seven hundred, thanks to Pallasion, who was still out there. It saddened me that a few of our kind had to be... eliminated, not willing to accept that they were fooled, clinging to the belief that the Reds were corrupt and the mortals evil. But it had to be done; if they were left alone, everything would be for nothing. But it still made me feel hollow; they thought they were in the right. Thank the Titans they were extremely few and far between, much less than the one-every-ten ratio I had expected.

I remembered what the Twilight Father had said, shortly before attacking. _There is no good, there is no evil._

How true. It's all truly just a matter of perspective. What's evil to us is good for the Old Gods, and vice versa. Maybe the universe would be better without morals; then we wouldn't have this nonsense philosophical conundrum that rears its ugly head every now and then. I mentally slapped myself. Better without morals - what kind of idiotic idea is that?

Verthelion perched next to me, both of us in our true forms, ready for them to be sent off. He looked my way. "The last ones."

I nodded. "I hope they won't be too traumatized. I mean, being prepared for corruption by the Faceless is a painful process. I know."

"That's out of our claws. All we can do is return them to their Flight."

I sighed, then flew down and shifted to my mortal form just above the ground. I ran a hand over the shell of one of the eggs, illuminated in the flickering light of a faucet of magma. I turned my head to the side, looking at Verthelion. He and I were, aside from the eggs, the only ones in the room. Far off in the corner of my senses, I could detect the faint hum of activity far above my head as the Red Flight moved around the Vermilion Redoubt. "Who's turn is it to see them off? You, me, Mercliona, who?"

"It's mine. You should hunt, you know."

Reluctantly, I nodded. I did need to keep my strength up. "All right. Take care of them."

He smiled. "Like I haven't the past dozen times?"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh shut _up_," I said, gently nudging him. With that, I returned to my true form and flew out of the area, looking down to see Verthelion opening a massive portal to Wyrmrest just before he and the Red eggs vanished from sight. I came to the main spire of Grim Batol, with members of our Flight occupying it, flying around, standing, or talking idly amongst themselves. The trogg infestation had been one of the first things we dealt with, and in days they had been burned out. Now that the final eggs of the other Flights had been returned to their proper locations, there were still a few things left to do. We still needed to welcome those of our Flight arriving from Pallasion's little journey around Azeroth, which came almost daily, in addition to raising the whelplings from the eggs that had been converted, those who had been taken from their brood-mothers, and were no longer part of that Flight.

The dragons in the Vermillion Redoubt were too few in number to cause a major impact in the surrounding wildlife as they hunted for food, but with our arrival, we were forced to eat in our mortal forms, save for the whelplings, lest the ecosystem be thrown into absolute chaos. That was another thing, and once Pallasion's group returned, we could set about the remaining things to do; One was to build our Shrine in Dragonblight, and the Amethyst Sanctum under Wyrmrest. After those were done, we could reliably set about carrying out our charge.

I sighed, and gently flew down. I could hunt later. In the past few months, I had gotten to know Grim Batol like the back of my paw. Shifting to my mortal form, I jogged through the corridors at a brisk pace towards my destination. Left, right, right, left, forward, up, left, so on and so forth until I reached the room set aside for the injured from previous battles, such as those with broken bones that healed the wrong way and had to be re-broken, or injuries from any number of reasons.

Such as troggs.

After all the time we had spent here, there were two who still needed to be here. I looked around the empty room, completely devoid of any life. A couple mats of twigs and leaves dotted the area, but nobody inhabited them. The infirmary was roomy, and as such it could easily hold my true form, which I shifted to. A couple pillars reached into the cavernous ceiling, chipped from the abuse they had undergone before we arrived. Torches blazing with eternal twilight fire lit the expanse, showering it in a flickering, comforting dark blue glow.

I sunk into the twilight realm, where I could see the two occupants of the room laying in the mats, the drakes Plutolion and Charoliona. They had arrived after being sent here by Pallasion some time in October, among others. The siblings gave us a scare; they had been in critical condition, thanks to the Cult. Multiple broken bones, half drowned, and with multiple scorch marks. The earth, fire and water ascendants on their trail had been dispatched quickly, and we only barely managed to pull them out of the danger zone. But here they were now, bickering like siblings, not unlike Theralion and Valiona.

The thought of Valiona made my heart constrict.

"Oh, really, _really_ now?" I heard Charoliona challenge her brother.

"Yes, really. I'm telling you, the egg came BEFORE the chicken!", Plutolion hollered back from the opposite side of the room, still laying on his mostly healed forelegs. I chuckled silently to myself, still unnoticed. I had to see this.

"How could the egg have possibly come first? When the Titans ordered Azeroth, they would have made the chicken first, since if they made eggs first, how would the young chickens take care of themselves? Explain that, smart one!"

He hesitated, lowering his head for a moment, whispering to himself before looking back up. "Who says they had to take care of themselves? Nobody knows how long the Titans ordered Azeroth, they could very well have created the eggs, have them hatch, and watch over them until they become adults, before leaving Azeroth!"

"Oh ho, I am going to have fun with that! First of all, why would the all-powerful, immortal Titans have gone through the extra effort when they could have just created the full-grown chickens right off? Furthermore, you say that 'nobody knows how long', so you're basically going on about - " Here she broke into an imitation of her brother's voice. "Oh, well you can't prove me wrong, therefore I must be right!"

"I SAID NO SUCH THING!"

"Ah, siblings," I said, making my presence known, making their heads jerk towards me. "Reminds me of me and Fuluthlion, or better yet, Valiona and Theralion." I turned towards Plutolion. "How're the legs?"

He shuffled them, wincing as he did. "They're better. All right, Selriona, which came first? Chicken or the egg?"

I pondered this a moment. "I don't know. When you're better, you can ask the Bronze."

Charoliona chuckled at him, resulting in her brother releasing a blast that narrowly missed her horns, crashing into the wall behind her. "What brings you here, Prime Consort?" she asked me. I had long since gotten used to having a title. The rush of blood to my head at the mention of it was now little more than a trickle.

"Healing," I stated simply, walking over to her. I tugged on the shadows of the twilight realm, sending them to her and infusing her with healing energies. Her healing ribs had long since passed the situation where magic helped more than natural healing, but every bit counted, despite the diminishing returns. And I wasn't really concerned about her having a tolerance to healing when she needed it; things had settled down majorly now. After healing her, I walked over to Plutolion and healed his forelegs the small amount that I could, before flying out of the infirmary, leaving the twilight realm. The dragonspawn menders would bring them food, which gave me time to go hunt.

Business as usual.

I twisted through the the bridges spanning our home, moving towards the top of Grim Batol, and walked out. How odd. Just a few short months ago, Verthelion and I walked in this way to establish Grim Batol as our Flight's home. The idea seemed surreal to me. I had a hard time imagining Grim Batol as anything else, even though it was fresh in my memory. The drakonids guarding the entrance paid me no mind as I walked out. Looking down the mountain, I had a hard time picturing how the dwarves meant to get back to Grim Batol once they left it. I couldn't see any ledges, any footholds, nothing mortals could use to climb.

I shrugged my wings. It hardly mattered to me. I spread my wings and glided down. Once at the bottom, I took in a deep breath through my nostrils, picking up a herd of stag to my left. I licked my tongue over my fangs and flew over to them. A few minutes of flying through the cloudless sky later, I spotted them, and began to descend on one sticking out of the main group, one with the smell of blood. An injury. Too bad for her. The last thing it saw was a shadow all around it increasing in size before I impaled it on my claws, making the others sprint away.

I took my weight off my kill and began to examine it. Lots of meat, no sickness. Easy to cook so my mortal form could handle it.

I briefly sat and brought a foreleg to my stomach area, feeling the multitude of bumps there as my eggs grew, and smiled. My mortal form showed no differences. Where my eggs went while I was transformed, I don't know. Probably the same pace my tusks or my wings do. I had to eat more than usual, to support both myself and their development. Once the shells had stopped growing, I would lay them within Grim Batol in the twilight realm, unless the Amethyst Sanctum was finished before then, the likeliness of which was zero to none. For the time being, though, I grabbed the poor animal I had slaughtered in my fangs and flew back towards Grim Batol, ready to cook it, and devour what part of it I needed, and then send the extra into the twilight realm, where any decomposers died within moments to my aura. Nothing rots there.

Soaring within Grim Batol, I soon brought myself past the sequence of corridors that led to my specific, individual home, where I slept, where I cooked, where I ate. A scale model of Azeroth was pushed to the corner, a spherical ball the size of my head painted with the most precise detail. Dotting it where multiple violet sticks, each in a place where some of our kind had hidden before being discovered by Pallasion's group. A pattern began to emerge; many were in the mountains, and most in the mountains surrounding Hyjal and the Twilight Highlands. No surprise there. We had been numerous there.

Stag still clamped in place by my jaws, I walked over to an indentation in the ground, in which burned eternal twilight flame. I'd found out how to create such fire a month after moving into Grim Batol. The trick was getting our flames to need no fuel. A lengthy process, entirely useless in combat, but oh-so practical for these purposes. I shifted to my mortal form and switched to carrying the stag in my hands. Most humans wouldn't be strong enough to carry it so easily, but of course, I'm not human. I placed the stag near the twilight fire pit, and pulled out a skewer, which I impaled into my prey and hung over the fire pit, shadowy fire lightly burning it. For most, this would render the meat unfit for consumption via shadow energy, but I had no such problems, of course.

For a few minutes I did nothing more than ponder new spells, which I had an uncanny skill with, and practiced a few, such as two shadows orbs that would track locations and release an eviscerating beam of shadow in between them. The result was more than satisfactory, and when I combined it with arcane energy from my capacitor, I could make them teleport next to an enemy and impale them on said shadow beam. After that, the stag was done. I pulled it from the skewer and cut off a good sized chunk of it, which I promptly consumed. I stored the rest in the twilight realm, and decided it was time for sleep. I hadn't found the time to do so for four days, so I'd sleep for five hours.

I returned to my true form and laid in the comforting swirls of shadow within the twilight realm, sighing as they caressed my scales, and fell asleep.

* * *

><p>I groggily woke up in the same place, but instantly I knew that thought was wrong.<p>

Because in front of me sat Nalestrasza.

I groaned, and pulled myself to my claws. Nalestrasza didn't always have a reason for appearing in my dreams. She did whenever she wanted to, for whatever reason, important or trivial, selfish or selfless. No doubt there was some mind-boggling mathematical formula behind it, which 'Only I have the mental capacity to even begin to grasp', as she would say.

"Oh good, you're conscious. Again. We have a very narrow window of opportunity for this, so I'd rather we didn't dally unnecessarily." When I didn't move, she growled. "You useless - Do I need to use electric shock?"

I gave her a glare that very clearly said 'Shut up Nalestrasza', but stood anyways. "What's this about a window of opportunity?"

"Well, let's see. Creating a shared dream is very hard. First off, _you_ need to be asleep, and then the one I'm going to connect you with ALSO has to be asleep, and the two have very little chance to coincide with our kind. But of course, _you_ never thought about that, did you? Of course not. This is all just flying over your head."

"What shared dream?" I asked, anger already beginning to burrow deeply into me, making me extend my tusks.

Wordlessly, my Red counterpart shook her head, before talking. "You remember the shared dream I gave you and Verthelion while he was chained in the Vermillion Redoubt, right? Please tell me you remember that. Even you can not be THAT stupid."

I growled at her. "I remember."

"Well, I'm creating another shared dream, but with someone else. The circumstances for doing this are very strict, like I said, and it takes me a lot of effort to align your brain waves accordingly, and use some of your magic to absorb their mind into yours briefly, to overcome the distance barrier. Without too much distance, I wouldn't need to use mana, but that isn't the case here. She is _literally_ on the other end of the world. Without leaving Azeroth she could not be farther away from you. Is this making sense to you?"

I rolled my eyes. "You're giving me a shared dream with someone, and going on about how hard it is for you."

"Hehe," she said in a nasal, insulting voice before returning to normal. "At any rate, time's wasting. Here we go. Change of scenery..."

My room within Grim Batol melted away, being replaced by a spot within the mountains of Feralas. Flowers of all colors blossomed along the vibrant grass, filling the air with the aroma. Red eggs were in groups and clusters around, protected from enemies by the natural environment and their brood-mother, resting in the middle of the mountainous clearing. She growled and shook her head, opening her eyes to take in the situation. She lazily looked at her eggs, then snapped her eyes towards Nalestrasza and I, growling menacingly.

I gulped. "Nalestrasza! What have you done, that's my - "

My brood-mother growled, standing up, just before Nalestrasza said, "Hi... mother." Oh, the awkwardness.

"Mother? But, no. This is just a dream."

My counterpart shook her head. "Shared dream. We're really here. I've been waiting for this opportunity to have Selriona talk to you."

Calestrasza, my mother, snapped her head towards me. "_Selriona_. I remember you. And so you torment me even in my sleep. Can I have no solace from your Flight?"

"Her idea - not my - not tormenting," I stammered, before getting a grip over my tongue and retracting my tusks. "It was Nalestrasza's idea to create this dream in the first place. She's the one who DID it!"

She turned to Nalestrasza. "N-Nalestrasza? You're... you're alive within her body? You were not lost when you became corrupted?" _Corrupted._ That sent a stab of pain through my heart.

Nalestrasza scoffed. "Lost. Nobody was 'lost' when Selriona was changed by the Faceless. It doesn't work like that. Only reason I exist is because she was forced to drink a Nightmare potion, of which one of the side effects are a sentient subconsciousness. IE, me. Selriona really _is_ your daughter."

Calestrasza shook her head. "But... no. That doesn't not make sense. She is a Twilight dragon! Whatever child of mine was in her body was lost the moment she was pulled out of our Flight."

Nalestrasza gave out an exasperated cry before leaning against a boulder, repeatedly banging her head into it. "Idiots! Idiots! Idiots! I'm surrounded by idio-o-ots!" she wailed. "First her," She looked at me. "And then you? Oh, why?" She began hitting her head again.

Despite the situation, I sighed, looking at my mother. "Yes, she is _always_ like this. Apparently, she is the ninety percent or so of my brain that I don't use, and is incredibly smart. No denying that, but it leads to an ego complex like no other."

Finally, my Red counterpart stopped hitting herself, looking back at us. "Come _on_. Do you honestly think that when Selriona was turned into a Twilight, that whoever she had been up to that point up and died, and that a new consciousness took hold?"

"Yes!"

"Well you're wrong! I have access to every single one of her memories, and if your theory was true, she wouldn't have any from her time in the Red Flight. But she _does_, and so you are wrong. Even you morons have to understand THAT logic!"

I sighed. "Nalestrasza, you have _such_ a way with words." Something in my mother's words caught me, making me look back at her. "Wait... tormented by our Flight? You don't know?"

"Know what,_ Selriona?_" She spat out my name like it was venom.

"Apparently you don't. Not surprising, if you're really here. Kinda isolated. You wouldn't have heard." I sighed, looking down briefly. "Our Flight has been accepted as one of the guardians of Azeroth. Our Queen gave us an Aspect. Verthelion."

She stumbled back, hitting a few eggs, but she simply passed through them like they were mist. "No. No. Why would she..."

"Because we helped kill Deathwing," I murmured. "We're freeing the others of our Flight from the mental trickery, and rebuilding. Our charge is to contain anything corrupt on Azeroth."

"No..." she mumbled, looking down. "No, you're not here!" she said suddenly, looking up at me. "This isn't a shared dream. You're still a figment of my imagination, because such a thing CAN NOT be true!"

Nalestrasza cut in. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but it is true. The Twilight Flight really is attempting to redeem itself, and Selriona really is your daughter, whom you have _literally_ no good reason to hate. You can choose to go on, be an ignoramus, and not believe what we have said, or you can redeem the horrible idiocy you have just demonstrated and accept the truth."

I hung my head in embarrassment. "Wow, Nalestrasza. Really." My mother seemed to be shocked into silence at the barrage of attacks on her intellect. I looked at her. "Like I said, she's _always_ like this."

Hesitantly, she spoke. "You... fought Deathwing?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Doesn't that warrant, you know, some amount of trust? Mother..."

Calestrasza didn't say anything. Instead, she walked forward and nuzzled the side of my head,. "Nalestrasza raises a good point. If you're not real, and just a dream, I have nothing to lose by saying this. And if it's not, then from what she says, you really are my child, and I apologize for what I said in Darkshore." I vaguely noticed Nalestrasza had vanished, but I mainly focused on my mother's words. My heart soared. I felt like I could do anything.

My mother accepted me. She didn't hate me. After all that she had said in Darkshore, she didn't want to kill me. I felt a tear come to my closed eyes.

"I-I forgive you, brood-mother." I felt a tug on my being, and opened my eyes. The tug came again, pulling me away from Calestrasza. "What the - " I was pulled again. "Oh, I'm waking up." I looked back at her. "Mother... does this mean that we're on good terms?"

She nodded as I was tugged again, my hind legs slipping as the ground disappeared from under them, forcing me to hold on to the ground with my forelegs. "It does. I am sorry. I would say I forgive you, but there isn't anything to forgive." With that, a final, massive tug ripped me off the mountain, sending me flying and spinning, the world turning into a whirlwind of greens and browns and orange and yellows until it finally stopped, turning into the chamber I fell asleep in. I stood up, and looked around.

"Okay Nalestrasza, now what?" I asked her, wherever she hid. "Nalestrasza! Come out! There had better be a good reason for doing that!" When she didn't say anything, I willed the dream to change to another location. It was at the moment when I didn't find myself in Wyrmrest that I felt incredibly stupid. I sat down, chuckling nervously to myself. _That didn't happen, Nalestrasza! I know you're laughing in there, so SHUT UP!_ I thought to her.

I shifted to my mortal form and ate another slab of the preserved stag I held in the twilight realm, before surfacing halfway into the physical world. I moved both selves out of my room, restless, but before I could leave, I came across a drakonid, walking in. He looked up at me, bowing. "Prime Consort, there is a mortal outside Grim Batol. They say they need to speak with you."

I extended a tusk in curiosity. "What's being done with them?"

"We're not injuring them, but it's ignoring all our commands to leave. Says they really do need to talk with you."

I clicked my claws along the ground in the twilight realm, and turned my head in the physical realm. "Why would a mortal need to speak with the Prime Consort of the Twilight Aspect? Furthermore, what mortal would know we're here?"

The drakonid shook his head. "No, not the Prime Consort. They asked for you _by name_."

This made me coil back in shock. By _name_? What mortal could know me _by name_, and that I was here? One of the Kingslayers, maybe. Ellemayne? Kolkna? "Um, yeah. Yeah, I'll go see what it's about. Thank you for telling me. You can return to your post." It still felt weird, being able to give commands, even to a drakonid. I shrugged in the twilight realm. I'd get used to it.

The drakonid nodded, and began to hurry out as I followed behind him. I paused for a moment, taking in the majesty of Grim Batol for the thousandth time, before taking off for the entrance.

A mortal who called for me _by name_. What could that possibly mean? Was it a trap? How could it be a trap? The guards said there was 'a mortal'. Not mortals. Mortal, singular. How did they know where I was? It could be a huge security leak. Our Flight had enough to do with rebuilding itself, we did not have the resources to go around convincing the mortal races to not kill us on sight. It was much, much easier to simply hide from them. So if they could find us, if even one knew where we were...

But they asked for me _by name_. What could that mean? Again, there were only a handful of mortals who knew my name. Samuel was... Titans know where. Stormwind still if I had to guess. Amanthe was with the Argent Dawn. There weren't many Kingslayers who knew my name, who I had given it to, but they could tell each other. None of it added up. Nothing to do but go to them, and see who they were.

I walked out of the entrance to see two drakonids keeping a human at spear-point, snarls resonating in the air. It was the moment that I saw the human that my heart stuttered in my chest. She looked up at me, blood quickly draining out of her face to make her skin the same color as her Argent Dawn robes, and I looked back at her, trying to figure out how she _found_ me.

"Amanthe," I whispered, before turning to the two drakonids who had turned my way. "I'll handle her from here. Thank you for not killing her." They nodded, and walked back to the gates of Grim Batol. I took to the air and swooped at her, grabbing her in my claws and flying away so that we could speak more in private. Once I found a secluded spot in the form of a hill amidst her shrieks and my repetitions of 'calm down', I gently put her down. She backed up from me almost immediately, her heartbeat thundering in my ear-plates amidst her smell of fear. Woops.

"It's nice to see you again, Amanthe."

She froze and narrowed her eyes, in spite of her heart hammering away in her ribcage. "_Selriona?_"

I shifted to my human form, violet mist curling off of me as I did. I spread out my arms. "Yeah, it's me."

"By the Light, don't _do _that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

I chuckled nervously, the two of us slowly approaching each other. "Sorry about that. So, what are you doing here? I thought you were in the Argent Dawn! How did you even _find_ me?"

She smiled. "You make it sound like you were hiding from me."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, that's what it is."

She chuckled, and grabbed me by the shoulder. "It's good to see you, too. Sorry about, you know. Hyjal."

I shook my head. "Don't blame yourself for that. You didn't get the window of opportunity to free me, it happens. Point is, I'm out. So, when are you going to tell me how you found me?"

"Heh, well, in the Argent Dawn they taught us how to detect twilight energy using the Light. I used it to track you down. It was all hells trying to pick up a signal, though, but once I did, it was fairly simple to find you. Bit time consuming, though."

I smiled. "You missed me."

"Hey, what are friends for? So, um, wow, you're big."

"You should've seen your face when I walked out. You were so pale!"

She lightly shoved me. "Oh haha, laugh it up! I didn't know it was you, I thought you were going to kill me!"

I flinched a little. "Why would I ever do that?"

"Like I said, I didn't know it was _you! _And I damned sure didn't expect to be detained by those drakonids." She eyed me. "What have you been _doing_?" she mock accused me.

"Oh, it's a long story. You might want to sit down."

So she did, and I related the story to her, picking up from where Alysra freed me, leaving out the Infinite (Since it might upset her to hear that I had seen her die), explaining about how the Old God tried to wear us down, Lor'danel, Pallasion and Murdonia, Vajarn's group, our goal, everything up to and including our changing of Grim Batol into our Flight's home. By the end of it I had returned to my true form, taken to laying on my stomach with my head resting on my forelegs.

She whistled, patting me on the snout. "You've been _busy_, haven't you?"

I chuckled. "Like never before. So, what made you leave the Argent Dawn? Didn't you like it?" I asked, raising my head.

"Well, I had a lot of time to think," she said, sitting next to me. "The Argent Dawn, was, well, I loved it. They treated me like family, I survived fighting the cult in Hyjal no problem, but, well. It wasn't really anything too complicated. I missed your company."

I chuckled. "And here you are."

"Yeah. There's also something else I want to talk to you about."

I turned my head to her. "About what?"

"Well, um, there's really no easy way to put this. It's kind of a spur of the moment type thing, what with learning that your Flight has a charge now, and, um, if I went back to the Argent Dawn I'd look like a huge idiot for leaving in the first place."

"You're stuttering."

She hit me along my nostrils. "I am not!"

I smiled. "Yeah, you are."

"All right, so I'm just going to spit it out." She took a deep breath as she closed her eyes. I couldn't help but smile. Amanthe, my dear friend, had found me. What exactly she planned on saying that worried her so much - "I want to be your Dragonsworn."

I jumped back from her, extending my tusks as I flailed my wings, miraculously and rather ungracefully landing on my claws, staring back at her incredulously. "_What? _Did I hear you correctly? _What?_ Why?"

"In the Argent Dawn I was _useful_. I fought the Twilight's Hammer. I actually helped Azeroth in a major way. I wasn't planning on going back to them, but I still want to be able to help, and helping you carry out the charge - "

"Amanthe, have you given this, ANY thought?" I demanded her. "Like, at all?"

"Like I said, it was a spur of the moment thing."

I groaned. "Oh, this reunion has just gotten fifty times more awkward. Amanthe, you do realize that this is a no return option, right? Once you do this, you're in it _forever_. You should really consider this. Sleep on it, or something!"

She shook her head. "Once I'm in, there's no turning back, which means you'll _never_ get rid of me."

I chuckled. "Okay, I'll admit there is that bonus. I mean, together with my best friend irrevocably? Yeah. But, look! Our charge is to contain anything corrupt on Azeroth. Demons, arcane corruption, Old Gods, that sort of thing. They aren't pleasant things, and you'll _have_ to deal with them if you do this."

She seemed a bit put off by this, but I didn't seem to be able to change her mind. "I've fought the Twilight's Hammer recently. I know what I'm up against. I think it'd be worth it."

I pulled in all six tusks halfway. "Amanthe," I said, lowering my voice. "You won't be able to properly raise a family. I might need your help at any moment, and you'd be bound _by oath_ to help. Really, think about this!"

_That_ caught her. She sat down, breathing deeply, mumbling under her breath. "No family... in exchange for... Light..."

I kept talking to her. "Amanthe, you should sleep on this, all right? I'd love to be with you, you're my best friend, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want you to do something you're going to regret, especially since you won't be able to go back on it."

Amanthe nodded. "All right. I found a little cave on the way here. I'll sleep there, and, um, meet back here at noon tomorrow?"

I nodded. "I'll bring you there." I stood up, walking over to her. I took flight and grabbed her in my claws. "Just tell me which way."

"To your right. Straight ahead that way." I nodded, and flew in the indicated direction. Within moments, I spotted the cave, both by myself and with her statement of 'That's the one'. I placed her down at the entrance, and shifted to my human form so I could peer inside. The cave was a nice, roomy thing. It was bone dry, and multiple off shoots inside made it possible to live there for quite a while. No smell of any other life form inside, either. Unoccupied.

She turned around to me. "All right. So, see you at noon. I'll have thought it over by then."

I smiled. "Yeah." She turned around. "Hey." Amanthe turned her head towards me. "I missed you. It's great to see you again."

She grinned. "Likewise, you big sack of scales." With that, she entered the cave. I flew back to Grim Batol and began counting the hours, as I helped the new arrivals settle in.

* * *

><p>I was at the location a few hours before noon, anxiety churning in my crop. Amanthe's decision would influence the rest of her life. I didn't want her to choose to go through with this only to regret it. I'd be damned if I secretly didn't want her to do so. A smile developed on my human form's lips. Not to have her <em>technically<em> have to do what I told her to (Since I would never, ever in a million life-times exploit that), but just so that we would be together. Hmm. Being with my mate, Verthelion, and my best friend, Amanthe. I could not see any problems with that.

As the sun climbed to its highest point in the sky, casting its yellow rays along the valleys surrounding Grim Batol, I saw Amanthe trekking up the side of the hill. Her blonde hair stuck out in every direction. We both took a deep breath before I spoke. "So, decided yet?"

She nodded, a grin tugging at her lips. "Yeah. I'm going to go through with it." My heart did a flip. "It's worth it. So, how do we do this?"

"Well, from what I know, it's really rather simple. But, I'm just six years old. I should be a whelp."

She chuckled. "It's hard to get over the fact that I'm _older_ than you."

"And that's a fact that will never change. Get used to it. So anyway, from what I know, I need to supply an oath-stone, which I've made." I took a flat round rock from my robes. I'd spent a few minutes infusing it with magic, a trivial process, at least by my standards. Dark blue runes glowed along the flat face of it, shivering in power. I handed it over to Amanthe.

"And you simply need to absorb its power. That will essentially be taking the oath."

"And what exactly is this oath?"

"Well, it's different for every one, but this one is basically that you pledge your life to supporting our charge, like we do by nature, and it binds you to me as your patron. A few... perks as well. I'll explain those when you get to it," I explained.

She rubbed a hand along the twilight runes, looking down at it, then up at me. "This doesn't change anything between us, does it?"

I shook my head. "Not in the least. I'm your patron in title, nothing more."

She nodded, and I stepped back, returning to my true form. She placed her hands on the stone, and closed her eyes. A dark blue light exploded out of the oath-stone, surging into her skin, continuously until the stone crumbled to dust, expended. Amanthe took a deep breath and opened her eyes. I was positively giddy. I could test this out now.

'_Testing. Amanthe, can you hear_ _me?_'I thought to her, making her jump.

"Was that - "

'_What, the telepathy? Yup. One of the things I put in the oath-stone. The other is that you won't be hurt by the twilight realm. Try it. Think to me._'

'_What, like this?_'

I shook my head. Whoa, that felt strange. She continued. '_What exactly is the range on this?_'

'_I don't think there is a limit. If we get too far away, though, we may have a headache. But I'm not worried about that. Azeroth isn't big enough for that to happen._'

She shuddered. "All right, that is just a whole new kind of creepy." She looked my way. "Um, are you sick?"

I cocked my head sideways as I sat down. "No, why?"

"Forgive me, but I'm not exactly an expert on dragon physiology. Are you supposed to have a bump on your stomach?"

I thought for a moment, but then I realized what she meant. "Oh, that's one of my eggs. I'm fine."

She jumped. "Eggs? You're pregnant?" she asked in a surprised voice. "Congratulations!"

I narrowed my eyes, confused. "_Mammals_ get pregnant. The term you're looking for is gravid, the state of a reptile in which they carry eggs."

She smiled. "Right, gravid. So, wait. You and Verthelion..."

What was she playing at? "Verthelion and I... you know I have no idea what you're getting at."

"You... did it?" she asked, blushing for some odd reason. What was wrong with her?

I cocked my head. "No clue, sorry. You know, after all the months I spent in Stormwind, you think I would have this figured out by now."

"Oh for the love of the Light. You two, um, mated?" she finally squeaked out.

I sighed. "Amanthe, you know that we don't go around gasping at basic bodily functions needed for the continuation of a species. Um, think of it this way. If a human came up to you and started bragging about how they are the best at, say, breathing, and that they take deeper breaths than anyone else, how would you react?"

"I would not care?" she said.

"Right. Now if someone came up to you and said that they have _trouble_ breathing, you'd help them, right?" She nodded. "Well with us, it's the same with all bodily functions. Sleeping, eating, excreting, mating, drinking. Really, you have no reason to be embarrassed around me." I thought for a moment, and chuckled. "You have no reason to be embarrassed, period. I'll never understand."

She shook her head. "No, you _never_ will, and I never will."

"So, where are you going to live?"

She put a hand on her chin. "Hmm, I'm thinking maybe the cave I just slept in. It's quite nice. Dry, sheltered, large, ventilated. I could live there, and hunt for food - "

I smiled, mirth gripping at my heart. "What's that you said? Hunt?"

She groaned. "Yes, rub it in. It was a good idea for you to teach me how to hunt, and I was wrong when I said that it had no use for me to know. Rub it in, Selriona."

I chuckled, moving next to her and draping a wing over Amanthe. "You know, things are much better now than they were before."

"Yeah. So, what next?"

"Well, Pallasion is still looking for those of our Flight in hiding. New people are arriving practically every day. I could use some help getting things in order, like food. But for now, let's see if we can get something of a bed in your home? A few pine branches overlaying each other..."

I felt her scratching at my legs, sending tiny lightning bolts up the nerve endings. "Yeah. Let's get to it then..." I could feel her smirk. "Patron."

"You and I both know you don't have to do that. Titans, I've barely gotten used to being referred to as Prime Consort."

"... I know."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think. Not over yet.<strong>


	48. Epilogue:Selriona

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**HUGE, HUGE thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita.**

**Without further ado, the Epilogue.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

I lay on my stomach within my chamber, looking at the wall in front of my, corridor leading away. Selriona is beside me, also on her stomach, our sides pressed together. Today is a slow day. Pallasion's group arrived last week, having exhausted the hiding places around Azeroth (and of course, my Prime Consort greeted him with a twilight prison). Fifty of them, counting him, Murdonia, Vajarn and Turliona. How it must hurt Vajarn. Turliona is the _only_ one left of his unit, just one fiftieth. He must feel like a failure, but if he has any emotional problems, none of them show through, nor do they interfere with his life. After accommodating Pallasion's group, we are, all in all fourteen hundred.

And I'm their leader. Titans, never in my life has it ever even crossed my mind I would be an Aspect, but here I am. The process of receiving the power was nothing short of agonizing, and the power... it still feels like there are tiny suns in each of my scales. It boggles my mind. I still don't know my own strength, as evidenced when I playfully shoved Selriona with a wing, sending her down to the ground.

Oops.

But there isn't much for us to do. As I said, it's a slow day. Tomorrow our Sanctum begins construction, everything is going as planned. I'll fly over to Silithus, making sure its corruption is in check, in addition to checking on Yogg-Saron's prison.

"You know," Selriona starts. "It's almost funny, in a way."

I look down to her. "What do you mean by that?" I ask her.

"Our Flight was created to destroy Azeroth, and here we are now. Protectors of it."

I chuckle, leaning down to nuzzle her neck, making her rumble in her throat. "Yeah. Here we are now. Sometimes, I think this is all just a dream." I raise my head, stretching my forelegs out in front of me.

She inclines her head up to look me in the eye. "And if it _is_ a dream, what would you do if you wake up?"

I think about it a moment. "I don't know. Depends on what strangeness reality is."

She laughs, pushing her head under my own, careful not to stab me with her horns, and I place the club of my tail over hers. "This is reality. I promise you."

I croon to her, and she pulls her her head away. She also extends her forelegs, reaching barely over half as long as my own, and raises her own head. "You know, I think I could do something with those shadow orbs I've been practicing with," she says, changing the subject. "If I realigned the energy value in the cutter, then maybe I could get it to heal people. Of course, I'd need to manipulate the search rune so that it won't heal enemies, but - "

"You know," I say, cutting her off. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a Blue."

She laughs. "You're just jealous I understand this stuff better than you, you silly natural-born, even if you do have more in the way of power."

I feel blood rush to my head. "Maybe I am." I nuzzle her crest behind her horns, draping a wing over her, so large it completely engulfs her form. Titans, I love her so much. How did we end up here? How did we come to deserve such a wonderful life? It all seems so surreal, and yet it's real. Mind blowing.

I lower my head and close my eyes, and I hear Selriona do the same. I let myself fall into sleep.

* * *

><p><span>Nalestrasza<span>

I am perfectly fine.

I rarely ever come into contact with anyone else beside my Twilight self, the only times being the occasional shared dream I oh-so generously set up. But I am okay with that. Not like anyone will ever understand, since they would go insane from such isolation.

_I wonder how Amanthe's doing. She's learning pretty fast, _I hear Selriona think. I'll never admit it to her, but I'm a little fond of the human as well. Only to be expected, from me being her counterpart. _How is she? Probably fine. She'd tell me with telepathy if anything was wrong._ I mentally roll my eyes. No, you don't say, Selriona?

I continue to sort the impulses coming from her scales, making her feel the contact of Verthelion, the floor, her own wings, and the air. I process the signals from her optic nerves, letting her see. She doesn't know all that I do, letting her see and hear and breathe. Never in a million years would I mess with those processes, such as make her hallucinate, unless her chemical imbalance would make her hallucinate regardless. Everything I do with her body is strictly calculated, as passive for me as breathing to you.

I've calculated what might come next, given the variables that I know. Out of the one thousand, three hundred and eighty three Twilight dragonkin here, there are roughly seven who are still persuaded that Deathwing was in the right. Selriona had expected this number to be much higher, but _of course_, she didn't factor in the fact that once Deathwing is dead, the number who'd want to be on his side would dramatically shrink. I can't predict who these traitors are, but I do know there is a very, very high likelihood, in the 99-100 percent range, that they will not be able to do anything, and a roughly seventy-three percent chance that they too would come around within the decade. So really, they are no threat, and there is no practical reason for me to tell her.

_I should probably go take a little flight. Verthelion's asleep, and I need to stretch my wings_. No kidding. I can detect the signals from her wing-bones, and they are very stiff from two days of no flying. _Hmm, maybe later, _she decides, the 'get up' signals emanating from her fading to nothingness, and her thoughts slowly shrinking to nothing. I scoff, even though there's nobody to hear me but myself. Selriona, honestly. You are so unimaginably lazy sometimes. But then, I suppose that's natural. Especially given how close you are to laying.

... why am I even talking to myself? It's not as if she can hear me.

I sigh, and continue to keep her, and by extension myself, alive. It warms my figurative heart to see that so much of the Twilight Flight has survived, the Red dragon in me being placated by the life that is continuing. As much as I deny it to myself, I will always have the urge to carry out the Red Flight's charge to protect life, which will be difficult given my location within Selriona's mind. But seeing the track record she and Verthelion have set, they're doing just fine.

* * *

><p><span>Alexstrasza<span>

I stand atop Wyrmrest, looking out from the top, where the orb of Azeroth, replacement of the not-yet-reconstructed Orb of Unity, hovers gently in the air. Soft carcasses of the northern wind keep it turning, clouds gently float across the oceans, land turns slowly to night and to day and back to night. I let out a barely audible sigh, and continue to wander my gaze along the few idling up here, touched by the noon-sun's light.

My eyes fall upon Itharius, the Ambassador of the Green Flight. In the months following Neltharion's burial, I've had much time to think, and many things to do. One of the things which I have done is reform the Wyrmrest Accord. Breaking the Accord was a reckless move on my part, catalyzed by Korialstrasz's sacrifice which I, at the time, believed to be betrayal. But after all had been said and done regarding my fallen brother, I saw it fit to restore the Accord, and the Ambassadors returned.

My gaze continues to move, landing upon the spot once occupied by Kalecgos, former Ambassador to the Blue Flight. The new Ambassador is the wyrm Azuregos. He is one of the most powerful of his kind, and his personality is somewhat sarcastic, but I can sense he means well. Currently the wyrm resides in the lower chambers of Wyrmrest, doing Titans-know-what. I spot the location where Chronormu often stands during debates. The bronze dragon's ecstatic personality had a habit of rubbing off on nearly everyone around her. Save for Nalice.

Speaking of the Black Wyrm, my eyes finally find their way to where she once stood, but now someone entirely different occupies the location.

The Ambassador to the Twilight Flight leans against a pillar, Raliona's indigo robes falling around her knees. The Twilight Ambassador is fairly quiet, preferring not to speak unless spoken to, and whenever we do, she takes on a hesitant look. Not surprising, after what the Twilight Flight believed until recently. It's plain to see that she doesn't feel welcome here, and many of the other Flights, members of my own included, have to suppress scowls when in her presence. She bears it in stride though.

I wonder about the Twilight Flight. Not a day goes by I don't ask myself if it was the right choice, if it wouldn't come back around later in a negative fashion. Two sides wage war within me; one saying that they are victims of circumstance, and another that they are waiting for our guards to lower. But such an internal conflict is pointless; the decision has been made. We have no choice but to trust the Twilight Flight, but that's not to say we aren't keeping a close watch on them. After what they have done, what they almost succeeded in bringing about, anything else would be foolish. One might say that they are 'on trial', proving that they can be trusted, and that we did not make a mistake with them.

So far, they are doing very well. Their youth means little; after all, were we not so young, long ago, when the Titans created us? And their actions speak loudly. I nearly wept from joy when my unhatched children were returned, safe and sound, from a portal connecting Wyrmrest to the accursed place known as Grim Batol. I had not dared to hope that there would be any left unconverted. But after seeing this, my confidence that we had made the right decision grew stronger, and now it overshadows the lingering doubt. But it's still there, and the doubt shall likely continue to exist for millennia to come. Those of my children who had been converted, who were no longer part of my Flight, I trust Verthelion to find care-takers for.

The recently-admitted Twilight Flight has made a good first impression.

Only time will tell if they are in earnest.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I stare up at the setting sun from my seat on a slab of stone. There are multiple such slabs here, littering the earth like snow in winter. The sun's dying light casts oblong shadows that slowly lose their contrast to the surroundings. I smile, thinking of all the things that have recently crossed my life. It started so small, but now my life is completely different than it would be otherwise. I hadn't thought much of 'Selria' when I met her in Dun Morogh, roughly three years ago, but we quickly bonded. Then there was her saving my life in the Deeprun Tram; if it hadn't been for the Twilight drake, I would be dead.

I chuckle. If I hadn't met Selriona, my life _would_ be different. Mainly in the fact that I wouldn't even have a life.

We'd grown close in Stormwind, and keeping her identity hidden was relatively trivial, save for her occasionally saying something slightly revealing in public, such as 'mortals'. But those times always passed without incident, and so months passed in relative calm, with her teaching me how to hunt and me teaching her how to blend in..

I chuckle again, lightly, thinking of the irony behind the statement I'm about to say, and gently talk to the clouds, even though I know I can tell Selriona directly. "Never would have guessed I'd end up needing to know how to hunt. You must be _glowing_ with pride at that."

I wonder how Samuel's doing. I know I should write to him, but there's still so much to do, so much to take care of. I'll do it later.

Then she was found out, and she and I both had to escape. She saved my life then, no matter how much she insists that she ruined my life by indirectly getting me exiled from Stormwind. She brought me to the Argent Dawn, placing my journey ahead of her own journey to find her destined mate.

I hold up a hand, letting shadows twist and curl around it, the spell for a flaying attack on the mind charging up. I have no plans to cast it, rather just to look at the dark energies swirling around my hand, chilling the air around it by an unnatural degree, draining my energy until I relent and allow the spell to dissipate, dropping my hand to my lap.

The Argent Dawn had accepted me like family. Their own shadow priests trained me, teaching me many new techniques, such as the ability to turn my body into a shadowy form of my normal self, granting me a notable degree of offensive and defensive powers. And Eric was such a good friend of mine. The paladin was smart, could take a joke, and if things had gone differently, maybe we could have been married. We were brought to Hyjal to fight against the Twilight's Hammer alongside the Guardians of Hyjal. For the first time, I felt like I was doing something useful, fighting alongside Eric. I was helping to save the world. Not nearly as much as others, but still.

It felt good.

So when we returned to the Plaguelands, I had a lot of time to think, having seen Selriona chained in Hyjal. I eventually came to the decision that I would find her. I learned how to track twilight energy using the Light, and began my search, starting where I had last seen her. I said my farewells, and left. Saying goodbye to Eric was the hardest. By the time I got back to Hyjal, my draconic friend's trail was nearly nonexistent, but it was still there. I had been in the Argent Dawn for a year.

Then the rest is simple. I found her, made a hasty decision, and here I am, a Dragonsworn of the Twilight Flight.

I smile and elevate my hand again, letting the magic Selriona has been teaching me start sparking under my skin. She didn't mention why I needed to learn it, along with how to read Draconic, but when I pressed the issue, she got a faraway look in her eyes, mumbling something about 'time' under her breath. After that I left it well enough alone. A dark blue spark erupts along my palm, spreading rapidly into thick coils of twilight fire, twisting and writhing around my hand in thick, greasy coils. I shudder from the feeling of the twilight flame slithering along my skin, cold and slimy, but I can feel warmth radiating from it over the sections of my skin further away. I don't know much about how to use it, but I learned quickly how to project a basic fireball.

_'Never thought I'd be living _here_, Selriona,' _I think to her. When I get no response, I conclude that she must be sleeping. Twilight fire lighting my path, I walk back into my cave, ducking under stalactites and weaving between stalagmites. I quickly find my bed, a mat of twigs and leaves that are far more comfortable than I thought they'd be; I can see why dragons sleep on them. Laying down, I let my mind shut down, ready for another day.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I awaken from my dreamless sleep, only to find Verthelion still asleep beside me, his wing still resting over me. I smile and nuzzle against him, before deciding to go for a fly. I move slowly, steadily removing myself from under his wing, careful not to wake him. Once I'm out, I smile at him, and turn tail towards the exit of Grim Batol. I walk through the corridors, looking at the few drakes flying about, or the drakonids on patrol. I pass by a chamber and see Dementliona sleeping, one of Verthelion's consorts. From what Amanthe has told me, in a mortal society this would generate jealousy between her and I, but I'm unable to comprehend this. It's probably far more than a matter of how you're raised, likely being a matter of species.

I quickly find my way out, where the drakonid guards allow me passage without a word. Violet-tinted wing membranes spread out to their full length, and I jump, catching the air under my wings as I dive down, pulling straight up at the last second. I send myself flying upwards as fast as I can before stopping, letting free-fall take me into a brief moment of weightlessness.

I smile. We've reached the finish line. Everything is done. I take a deep breath and let a river of violet flames burst from my maw, flowing into the darkening night sky. After flying around a little while longer, I thrust my wings down, sending me soaring straight up and landing on a perch at the top of a mountain. I turn to face Azeroth's shadow, a red haze near the horizon with the thick cover of night underneath, slowly rising.

I open my mouth, not sure who I'm speaking to. "Finally did it. We've finally reached the resolution." I allow myself a lighthearted laugh. "Oh, it's all going to be good. Well, for a while." I turn around, looking at the glowing orange orb of the sun, slowly falling below the horizon. Our story's not over. I know that nothing lasts forever. All stories need an end, and ours has only just begun. Neltharion was testament to that. Eventually, something will happen, and I will die. Eventually, for some odd reason or another, Verthelion will also die. It may be in centuries (oh Titans, not that soon!), millennia, or millions of years from now. But one day, it will come.

I lean my head down and raise a foreleg to my stomach, feeling my multitude of eggs, of children, growing there. A smile grows on my fangs. Tomorrow I'll lay them, and in a few more months, they'll hatch. A few months ago, I would never have hoped to have the time to have a brood, just being happy enough to evade everyone who wanted me dead for the Flight I belong to.

I raise my head back up, looking at the sun, the bottom now touching the horizon. My thoughts wander to Amanthe. I know when, where and how she was going to die. She will have to go to the Bronze one day, will have to go back in time to help me, will have to die. And I know that if I try to stop this, the Bronze will be all over me. But at least there is one benefit to this knowledge. Until that fateful day comes to pass, Amanthe will be unable to die. A memory claws itself to the front of my mind, bright like it had happened yesterday. In my mind's eye, I see Amanthe in violet robes and me in my mortal form, atop Hyjal.

_"What were those tablets you read?" _I remember asking her.

_"They were these magical things. I'd seen a Kingslayer use one of them to reveal a dragon hiding in human form, and I only recently got one. Looks like it came in handy, huh?"_

I frown. So that's the cue then. When Amanthe receives those tablets, it will be time. Until then, she is not going to die. But I will do everything in my power to delay her receiving of those things for as long as I can. I remember that she told me she was in the Twilight's Hammer for a while, but now I know this to be a lie; I'm the reason she can use Twilight flame. I teach her. For a moment I feel a twinge of anger towards her, but I suppress it. It's still too soon to know everything. For all I know, I'm the one who _tells_ her to say that.

I refocus my eyes on the dying hues of crimson and yellow as the sun is swallowed halfway by the darkening earth, shadows elongating rapidly, the sun's light dimming to levels my eyes can withstand. I decide not to dwell on such things. I have my whole life ahead of me. Amanthe will find the spell to freeze her aging, I will lay my children within the twilight realm, our Flight will rebuild and slowly, but surely, gain the trust of the other Flights. One day the peace will shatter, but I'm happy living my life as best I can until then. I start thinking of names for my children aloud.

"Ialion, Farliona, Nixoliona..."

The sun dips below the horizon fully, a final gasp of dying light as it vanishes from sight, Azeroth's shadow leaping from the opposite end of the sky to consume everything in night. The sky darkens to a shade of blue, and I feel a slight shudder run through me as twilight falls on the Eastern Kingdoms. A single doubt pulses through me. Are the Old Gods in the wrong? Could this all be just an elaborate trick? A conspiracy to keep us from ending the corruption of the other Flights and the evil of the mortals?

This feeling stirs within me for the last time it ever will. It'll never show up after tonight.

As the sun sets further below the horizon and night engulfs the world, the feeling fades away.

* * *

><p><strong>'Collapses back in chair'<strong>

**God, this chapter in particular took a lot out of me. Not so much physically, but emotionally. I started this story as a little notebook thing in OpenOffice. The story was complete then, but holy fuck was it _awful_. A couple years later I discovered that a site for fan fiction actually _exists_ and made this account, and gave my story a complete overhaul since the plot for a better version of it simply would. Not. Stop. Bugging. Me.**

**And I'm glad it didn't. Three hundred fucking thousand words. I don't think I've _spoken_ that many words in my life. I'm proud of the story, I like how it turned out, and I'm grateful for every single one of you who read, alerted, favorited, reviewed. You guys know who you are, and I would give you a bone-crushing hug through the interwebs if I could. You guys gave me the motivation to see this through, which I never could have done without you. It feels heavenly to be able to click the status over to 'Complete', but it's also a bit difficult.  
><strong>

**But when I made the plot for the improved version of the story that you see now, I also had the plot for a sequel to it. And, just like before, the plot will not leave me alone if I don't write it. At first I had every intention to write it, but as we got closer to the end of this story, I began to wonder if maybe I should just leave it here. Of course, in the end, I decided against that, otherwise you would not be reading this. So I will be putting up a sequel for this, but not soon. I only have the 'bare bones' plot outline for the story, so it'll take some time for me to get off my ass and plot it out, which will probably take anywhere from a week to two months, provided something terrible doesn't happen to me 'glances at the flu'. However, I can tell you a few things about the sequel.**

**It will go up under the title 'Full Circle'. Full Circle will be Amanthe-centric, and it will, most likely, be longer than this story, the mere thought of which gives me shudders since I could never picture this story itself passing ninety thousand. That's all I'm going to give away.**

**Again, thank you all so, so SO much for sticking with me. it means so much to me, and I honestly can't thank each and every one of you enough. See you guys in Full Circle. **

**This is coincidencless, logging off.  
><strong>


End file.
